


here's to the strongest fighter, here's to the last survivor

by Dialux



Series: words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (And Keep It From Killing Her Family), (Yes Even Those Annoying Brats Over That-a-way), (or at least the Ainu equivalent), (srsly. they are only SLOWLY learning to like each other.), ...a hell of a lot of angst for ostensibly a fix-it fic but HERE WE ARE, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anairë's Grand Plan To Conquer The World, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Women, Banter Between Not-Mates, Bechdel Test Pass, Complicated Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Grieving, Hair Shenanigans!!, Inappropriate Gallows Humor, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, That fic where the Mothers Three tase Morgoth, dysfunctional families vvv slowly becoming functional!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 48,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: Well, thinks Nerdanel. Well. It isn’t as if she has much faith in her own sons’ abilities to make decisions now, not after she spent a lifetime trying to instill independence in them and they allstillfollowed their father into the teeth of ruin and grief.[The fix-it fic where Nerdanel, Anairë and Eärwen sneak out of Aman to steal some Silmarils because wars don'talwaysneed to be won by armies.]
Relationships: Anairë & Eärwen (Tolkien), Anairë & Nerdanel (Tolkien), Anairë/Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Nerdanel, Eärwen/Finarfin | Arafinwë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Nerdanel, Nerdanel & Anairë & Eärwen (Tolkien), Nerdanel & Eärwen (Tolkien), Nerdanel & Sons of Fëanor
Series: words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101053
Comments: 81
Kudos: 185
Collections: Tolkien Gen Week 2020





	1. how people don't vanish when you stop loving them

It becomes a habit before long: when they’re both in Tirion, and they have a night during which no one will miss them, they get together in one of Nerdanel’s many-roomed, echoingly empty house, and drink a good cellar of alcohol. They switch off on who brings the alcohol, and before long it becomes a habit to pick up a cask of something wherever they’ve spent the past few weeks to enjoy with the other. They were never good friends before the whole business: too different and too focused on their chosen fields- until, of course, they were abandoned.

Nerdanel a good fifty years before Anairë, that’s true enough, but Nerdanel’s not exactly in the business of comparing who’s got the worst scars. They both understand each other in a way that nobody else can in Tirion: widows who cannot mourn their husbands, parents who cannot mourn their children, because they are not dead. 

Only gone.

Gone where Nerdanel cannot follow. Where she _will_ not follow: and that’s the rub of it all, that this is Nerdanel’s choice, as much as it can be anything, and she- while she doesn’t regret the choice of itself- does regret the pain surrounding the choice, inevitable and inexorable and terrible.

“Tulkas’ _breath,”_ says Anairë, grimacing as she consumes the spicy, scarlet-colored drink in her hand, made from fermenting some strange fruit in Yavanna’s Pastures.

“No,” says Nerdanel wryly. “If anything, it’d be Yavanna’s breath, wouldn’t it?”

“Has anyone ever called you a pedant, Nerdanel?”

“Yes,” she says, leaning back in her chair and breathing in the smell: it’s Carnistir’s chair, and it still smells like the hair lotion he’d favored in Tirion, underneath all the dust and mustiness. “My husband was _very_ clear about my faults when he left.”

Anairë rolls her eyes, which is by far better than Mahtan’s pursed lips or Nerdalië’s look of distress whenever Nerdanel mentions her husband. It’s why they do this, really, Nerdanel thinks: there’s something to the memory of her family which isn’t _just_ pain. There had been a time when her sons had been sweet boys, and her husband had been a kind man, and her family had not been responsible for the most terrible deeds in all of Arda. Nerdanel’s fairly certain that the rest of them are too busy plotting- vengeance, or triumph, or something monumentally stupid and grand- to remember that, but she isn’t.

“I think sometimes,” says Anairë, morosely swilling the contents of the glass, “it’d be better if _we’d_ fought, you know. Nolo and I.” 

Nerdanel winces at the shortened name, borne of years of internalizing her husband’s disgust, and tries to hide it by taking a long sip of the drink. She regrets _that_ immediately: Yavanna’s alcohol is full-bodied and the kind of rich that blazes down her throat. But it also distracts her from sneering at Anairë, and that’s always a good thing while she has three rants still lined up on her tongue.

“Then I’d at least be angry,” continues Anairë. “But no: he left, and he was so _busy_ leaving to be with his brother that he didn’t even see me! I don’t know if he even knows _now_ whether I’m there or not!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course he misses you.”

“He didn’t ask, did he?” says Anairë. “I don’t know what I’d have done either, if he’d asked. If I’d have had to fight with him.”

“You think you’d have gone to Beleriand?” demands Nerdanel incredulously. 

“If he’d _asked,”_ says Anairë miserably, “I think I would’ve. I mean: would it have been worse than this?” 

She waves a hand, encompassing everything: the room, the house, the city, the entire island. Nerdanel slumps backwards. It’s true enough. This particular room’s was aired out by Nerdanel when she returned to Tirion two days earlier for this express purpose, and the only other truly functional rooms are her kitchen, her study, and her bedroom. She tries to rotate the room she meets Anairë in between the entirety of the house so at least no single room’s in worse disrepair than the rest. This house is on the verge of collapsing, held up only by her husband’s cunning work and magic. The city’s a deluded mess of dead people returned to life and cowards and zealots and the worst kind of hypocrites, interspersed liberally among all the people for whom Finwëan family issues remain unimportant. Nerdanel rather likes those people for whom this doesn’t matter at all, but there’s an edge of disinterest to their faces that she can’t help but find grating.

This is her _family._

“Well.” Nerdanel tries to rally. “Well. Do you regret it?”

“Regret isn’t strong enough,” says Anairë. “And it isn’t weak enough either: I don’t _know._ But I miss them. My daughter! My sons! And now all I have is this. Ashes. Dust.” She throws back the rest of the drink, makes a face, and pours out a full measure for herself. “Memories, too, I suppose. Is that enough for you?”

“I don’t think it’ll ever be enough,” says Nerdanel, truthfully enough. She peers into the depths of her glass and sighs, letting the truth slowly swim out into open air. “I don’t think I’d do anything different if I could go back. But maybe… maybe I’d kick my husband out before he ever lost his mind, and keep my sons with me- I’d have worked for that, at least. If there’s one thing I can’t forgive of him, it’s how he died! How he took everyone away from Aman and then just _died,_ the stupid selfish coward!”

It’s a rant that Anairë’s heard many times, so she just sighs and nods. “But would you leave Aman?”

“No,” says Nerdanel. “Never for myself.”

“For your sons?”

She closes her eyes. The truth does frighten Nerdanel, even now, because she’s a mother, and when she first held Maitimo, the depth of her love for him had terrified her. Because she knows her abilities and her limits, and she won’t test them ever for herself.

But her sons…

“I don’t know,” she whispers.

“We,” says Anairë, with the focused fury of a properly inebriated woman, “promised each other no _lies.”_

“Then yes,” says Nerdanel. She doesn’t dare look up, hands clasped tight around the glass, tight enough to shatter it. “Yes! I love him, and I love them, and it matters not to me where they have gone or what they have done.” Her eyes shut. “Unconditional love, Anairë, did I swear: unconditional and eternal, and I meant it then.”

A hand brushes over her wrist, taking the glass and setting it on the floor. “Clearly,” says Anairë, “Fëanáro is not the only one in your family who takes oaths seriously.”

“Do _not_ speak to me of his name.”

“I’ll speak to you of whatever I wish. I love Nolofinwë: I loved them all. And now we do not even know if they will reach Beleriand.”

“Bah! As if you know that Beleriand will be safer than that ice!”

“We can hope,” says Anairë.

And that, thinks Nerdanel sourly, is likely all that any of them can wish for now: hope.

…

Hope, stinging and paltry, just as painful as it is sweet. 

_Ashes and dust,_ Anairë had said, and it’s truth: the ash of grief and the dust of death and the echoing silence of loneliness.

Nerdanel pounds stone into shapes of beauty and ugliness until all she tastes is marble and stone, and nothing of salt.

…

Then Fëanáro dies, and Nerdanel stays in Tirion; and then Maitimo is captured, and in a pain so vicious it hurts in Nerdanel’s own breast, she leaves Tirion behind.

…

(“Maitimo is captured,” says Nerdanel, hours before she flees, and her eyes are not red, and her hands are not trembling, but her face is white as ash. “He is not dead.” She takes a long, rattling breath. “He is not dead.”

Anairë does not say anything.

After a long moment, Nerdanel looks up at her. “I wish he were,” she whispers.)

…

It is years later- after the sun rises for the first time- when she returns to Tirion and finds that Anairë is nowhere to be found. Or: she is to be found in her home, but she does not accept visitors. She has not accepted visitors for a long time. She does not speak to anyone, not Eärwen, not her parents; she has not responded to any of Arafinwë’s requests or invitations either. Short of shattering the bedrock beneath her home, they don’t actually have a way to enter her home without her permission.

Nerdanel looks at Eärwen’s exhausted mien and Arafinwë’s averted eyes, and she nods. That night, she packs some of her tools, sneaks out of the castle, and makes her way down to Anairë’s home- the one that she’d shared with her husband and her children, and still inhabits when she’s not with her parents.

The doors are locked.

The doors are locked with Fëanáro’s locks, which means that Nerdanel cannot pick the locks without Anairë’s keys. 

Nerdanel sighs, rolls her eyes, and takes out the diamond-dust wire, looping her palms and fingers with a spare cloth, and sets to filing down the hinges.

Inside, the house is dusty and dark and empty: she hasn’t kept any servants for years now, and no single woman, no matter how much she’d be motivated to clean it, could have kept it as spotless as Anairë had always preferred. Now Nerdanel’s feet echo on the stone where the rugs have worn away, and her heart hurts as she slowly makes her way through the rooms: well-preserved but shadowy, every last one a reminder of everything that has left Aman.

Anairë’s not in her bedroom, and not in Nolofinwë’s either. She’s not in the kitchen or the library or the gardens, and finally Nerdanel makes her way to the children’s wing, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

Findekáno’s and Turukáno’s rooms are empty. Írissë’s room is open to the elements- the windows are flung open, and the wind has set all of it to disarray, all the blankets and the papers strewn over the floor- which _does_ frighten Nerdanel enough to check if Anairë’s decided to fall off the windowsill. But there’s no body underneath, and it’s not a high enough fall for it to do anything other than break a few limbs, which Anairë’d ensured when she and Nolofinwë were first constructing the house.

 _Enough that they can’t get into further mischief that night,_ she’d told Nerdanel at the house-warming ceremony, _but not so much that they never get into mischief again!_

 _(Stupidity,_ Nerdanel had thought. To allow mischief- to encourage it, even- seems about as counterproductive as parenting can get. And look where it’s left Anairë now: alone, cold, in this dank, miserable excuse of a house with memory like a thorned vine threatening to strangle anyone who walks within. 

But then, Nerdanel’s home is no better. She’s got nothing but memory like a roaring wave, nothing but memory, and regret, and the cold, cold comfort of knowing herself to have made the right choice in her lungs.)

When she enters Arakáno’s room, she initially thinks it’s empty. It isn’t: Anairë’s under the covers, curled up, and she’s lost so much weight Nerdanel initially thinks she’s died.

But her eyes flutter, and she looks up at Nerdanel, squinting through the moonshine. For a long moment she doesn’t react. Then her face collapses, and she starts to weep.

Nerdanel wishes she’d make some sound; these soundless, wracking kind of sobs aren’t any kind that she’s familiar with- Carnistir and Makalaurë had been the only ones of her sons prone to weeping, and both were easily soothed. But she steps forwards and wraps her arms around Anairë, and Anairë lets her- or is too weak to so much as try to stop her- and they stay like that even when Nerdanel’s shoulder begins to cramp, even when the sun rises and the castle likely knows that Nerdanel’s disappeared. 

Finally, when she seems to have gotten a better handle on herself, Nerdanel lifts her up and carries her down into the kitchen.

“I hope you have some food in here,” she tells Anairë, hunting through the kitchen. There isn’t much: even the pipes are giving off a rusty, reddish kind of water, and there’s mice droppings in the corners of the pantry, which doesn’t leave much hope for anything to have remained. “You look like you haven’t eaten since the sun rose!”

“I haven’t,” says Anairë heavily.

Nerdanel freezes, turning to look at her. 

“Arakáno-” Anairë swallows. “He died in the battle. Right after the sun rose.” Tears stand out in her eyes once more, and she dabs them away with her sleeve. “I couldn’t do it after that. I _can’t._ What kind of a mother can eat and laugh in comfort while her children struggle in a land they didn’t need to _go to?_ My husband. My children. My _daughter-”_ and then she looks up at Nerdanel, and her voice turns bitter. “All for you and yours. Tell me, Nerdanel, why do you get to have all your sons when mine has to die?”

“I didn’t know,” says Nerdanel slowly. “I would’ve come earlier if I knew about Arakáno.”

“Do not say his _name.”_

“I will say to you what I wish,” says Nerdanel, remembering the weight of Anairë’s hand on her own in a dark room, Carnistir’s memory hanging in the air like a shade long gone. “No. We are the only ones who can understand, Anairë, do not think that I don’t know that. I am sorry.”

But Anairë’s not listening.

“Why do your sons live!” shrills Anairë, seizing the closest thing to hand not nailed down and hurling it at Nerdanel’s head. It’s rather a pathetic attempt: Anairë’s arms have lost too much strength to truly do anything dangerous, but Nerdanel respects the attempt at least. “Why why why _why-”_

“By chance and by fate,” says Nerdanel firmly. She steps forwards and grips Anairë’s shoulders, and kneels so she’s looking into Anairë’s eyes. “Nothing more. But you are a mother, Anairë: you are not just a mother to Arakáno. Two other sons do you have, and a daughter besides. Live for them.”

“And what,” says Anairë, the bright, hysterical edge of her eyes still shining, “should I forget him? The youngest of them all! That they let him _die,_ my son, my _son-”_

“You are a mother,” snaps Nerdanel. “We do what must be done, do you understand? He was of age, he could make-”

“-his own _decisions?”_

Well, thinks Nerdanel. Well. It isn’t as if she has much faith in her own sons’ abilities to make decisions now, not after she spent a lifetime trying to instill independence in them and they all _still_ followed their father into the teeth of ruin and grief.

“No,” says Nerdanel. “But you cannot kill yourself for the sake of another, not even if he’s a son. Not even if-”

_-if you love him more than the world itself._

She bites back the words, knowing them to be useless against Anairë’s current predicament. The awful brittle edge of Anairë’s fear fades, slowly, from her gaze, and she curls inwards, hair shielding her face from view. Nerdanel pulls away. 

Then Anairë looks up at her, and the madness is gone from Anairë’s gaze- the hysteria, the sorrow, the vicious howling emptiness- replaced instead by something that shines, silver as ice under the stars, as a knife in the sunlight, as the moon, glittering-new. The woman that Nolofinwë had married: sweet as a sparrow, with a beak so sharp it did not even hurt when she made her opponent bleed.

“You would know,” she says.

Nerdanel breathes in slowly. _I wish he were dead,_ she hears, echoing in her mind and then back to Anairë: the ghosts of their family, coming home to roost. “I would,” she says.

“I,” says Anairë, “will do what must be done.”

“What must be done,” echoes Nerdanel. 

“I don’t know what it is,” says Anairë, tossing a strand of her hair back. “But you’re right: I am not just mother to one son, and it is not like others have proven themselves capable of keeping them from making stupid decisions. As a mother, is it not our duty to keep them from killing themselves?”

“Our _duty,”_ repeats Nerdanel quietly. “Anairë-”

“You do not want to save them?”

“I do not think I can,” she confesses: her oldest fear, her most grievous failing. 

“Our sons,” says Anairë, suddenly fierce. “My daughter. If we are not enough, we will _make_ ourselves enough. For them.”

“Anairë-”

“Promise me,” she says, and the determination gleaming in her eyes shifts, showing the edges of the all-consuming grief running underneath it. “Not with an oath. I don’t want your will to be anything but your own. But a promise made here, between us, who lost our children and our husbands, and stand to lose them even more terribly: to try to _end_ this.”

“My husband could not,” says Nerdanel. “Tirion lays empty for all the Noldor that followed him and your husband to Beleriand- and you think we can achieve this?”

“I don’t know,” says Anairë. “But surely you understand that I cannot sit here while my children suffer for a single decision they took with full blessings of their elders!”

“We’ll be under their Doom as well,” says Nerdanel.

“Tears unnumbered shall you shed,” quotes Anairë. Her hand reaches up and clasps Nerdanel’s. “Tears unnumbered have I shed. If I am to shed more- if I must lose more- I will go mad.” Her nails dig into Nerdanel’s wrist, leaving marks. “If you are to lose any of them- oh, Nerdanel, I would rather shove a spear through my guts than have to feel their spirits flicker out. If ever you are to feel it… I would cut your throat myself.”

She thinks of Fëanáro’s death. It had hurt in her bones when he died, and Nerdanel had buried herself in a world as empty of fire as she could imagine, until the howling ravages of her soul had calmed even slightly. 

“That terrible,” she whispers. “I knew- I saw Indis’ grief, and I thought- Maitimo- my own-”

“I will never love another,” says Anairë firmly, and Nerdanel knows her to mean _my love is not lesser._ “But I birthed my children from my own flesh, and I held them in my arms while they were still slick with my blood, and I promised to protect them, and I did not. That is a blunter knife than ever the gift of love that I gave Nolo could cause me.”

A blunter knife takes longer to sever the strands of love. Nerdanel closes her eyes and imagines Maitimo dead, impossible to distinguish the blood from the strands of his hair. Makalaurë, his lovely throat a ruin of scarlet and gore. Tyelkormo with blood over his hands and his knife, eyes shining even in death. Caranthir and Curufinwë, shadows turned both darker and paler by grief, hands still tight on the swords slid between their ribs. And her sweet, sweet boys, for boys they shall always remain in Nerdanel’s memory: Amrod and Amras, hair flaming around them and teeth gritted in the same manner as Fëanáro when he’s afraid but wholly unwilling to show it, facing off against a darkness so vast they seem like twigs in a snowstorm before him.

It does not take much to imagine it, and that is what frightens Nerdanel more than anything else; she’s never been prone to many flights of fancy, and the few that she has have mostly turned out to be premonitions. If this is to be her future…

Nerdanel swallows, and makes a choice.

“For fear and love, then,” says Nerdanel, shifting her hand so she’s gripping Anairë’s hands just as tightly as Anairë is holding hers. “For it is not just our duty to save our children, is it not? It is our right as well.”

Anairë tilts her head to the side, and Nerdanel moves backwards. 

“Our right!” she says, and laughs, low and bitter. “Yes. Our right. Our griefs, and our duties, and our responsibilities: though I doubt that anyone shall understand this if we are to ever speak of it to them.”

“No,” says Nerdanel. “They think that once made, our minds are made; once chosen, the path cannot be changed. But circumstances change.”

“Not for hate or anger do we go to Beleriand,” says Anairë, and beneath the ruin of her features, beneath the gauntness and exhaustion, there is something sparking, something lighting like a storm beckoning on the horizon. “For love, and for fear, and for duty. And not quickly! Not with too much haste- with preparation enough to accomplish what we must.”

“We shall need to learn what is happening there,” agrees Nerdanel, wiping at her eyes wearily. “I haven’t spoken to anyone reborn yet- not even those who lost their lives after Alqualondë.”

It had been shame that drove her to the silence. Nerdanel knows this. But it had also been that she just doesn’t know what she’d say to those people, who had loved her husband dearer than she ever had, and surely trusted him more. What words could she ever have for them?

“They went for love of Fëanáro and love for his sons,” says Anairë quietly. “I do not think we can tell them the truth now, but- surely they will understand, when all this is over?”

Nerdanel’s hands tighten into fists. She considers, briefly, being kind. But if they are to do this, then they will do it without any illusions about what this will entail.

 _“If_ it ends,” says Nerdanel, and means it as a warning.

Judging by the weary, grim determination in Anairë’s gaze, she knows it well.

…

Later, Nerdanel picks the weevils out of the flour left in the cupboard and makes a thick broth for them out of the potato and dried, crumbling herbs. It doesn’t taste of much of anything beyond salt and the faintest hint of mint, and the herbs only provide for a gritty leaving at the base of the cup. They don’t discuss anything; just sit in silence, contemplating their future. Contemplating all the futures they’re abandoning in favor of their family.

 _It isn’t,_ thinks Nerdanel, _a sacrifice that I regret overmuch._

Not yet, at least.

…

(Here is a story that Maedhros never tells anyone, because Fingon never asks, and because he does not wish to be called mad: Maedhros knows how many years it’s been since his capture. He knows because there have been thirty nights when the pain faded, and all he can feel on those nights is the soft cold of grass and starlight, and all he can hear is a song of milk and joy. 

The pain is always sharper after, as if punishing his hroä for the gall to consider itself above the agony. But there is no one in all the world who sings that lullaby save for his family, and no one in all the world who sings that lullaby in that manner save for his mother, and Maedhros would think his mind shattered if it did not happen so faithfully, one night for every year.

His mother forswore them when they went to Formenos. His mother abandoned them first, before ever Námo’s doom. 

Maedhros has never before wanted this badly for his imagination to run true.)

…

…

Nolofinwë had not loved Anairë for her looks. 

She’s not beautiful by anyone’s standards, much less the exacting standards of the Noldor; too short and with features that are not lovely or striking. Her hair’s dark, yes, but not nearly thick enough to bear too many of the ornaments in the Noldorian fashion. Even her eyes are the grey of a stormcloud, and not the silver of Telperion.

But the first time Nolofinwë came to the Lore Guild, he’d had a question that needed answering- some disagreement between him and his father regarding ruling, one that they both hoped the Lore Guild could resolve. Anairë had spent the afternoon explaining Finwë’s policies, and then she’d sat with him and debated him with enough fervor and humor to bring him back the next week with another question and another long-winded, breathless discussion.

After Finwë left for Formenos, Anairë had helped him with the governance in a quiet, subtle manner. She’d ensured the castle ran smoothly during the day, and she’d ensured that he always had an hour or two to talk to her about things over the night. Anything and everything. They trusted each other: they were never separated, and never desired it.

(Arafinwë and Eärwen lived separately for long years and then joined again, because both loved their respective cities too dearly to abandon them entirely. Nerdanel and Fëanáro… well, enough was said there. 

But Anairë and Nolofinwë are scraps of the same torn page.)

Twinned stars. Matched blades. The contrasting, curling edges of a puzzle grander than any they had ever played before. Than any she could’ve known existed before. They are beautiful and matched and joined, inextricable and inevitable; feeding one as one diminishes. Their sacrifices had never been of one or the other, made more by one or the other, because their books had always been balanced in the end- by the unforeseeable, distant end of it all, Anairë had been certain- with love.

This is the important word there: _had._

…

He does not come to her when he leaves. 

He does not search for her when he leaves.

(Eärwen binds her hands with her own and clutches her close, and Anairë weeps into Eärwen’s soft arms. Arafinwë and Nolofinwë leave with their people, and their wives reach for comfort with each other, cold and pitiful. And then Arafinwë returns, and claims his father’s crown, and Eärwen reconciles with him.

Anairë, who had been queen, who had been loved, has none of that remaining to her.)

He does not speak to her that last night: after Finwë dies, but before his pyre is set alight. He does not even hold her, though they lie in the same bed. Just stares up at the ceiling, and does not speak. Anairë lets him, because this is a grief that none of them have ever experienced before; surely it will change with time.

But they don’t have time, and he takes her children, and he takes himself, and Anairë does not say goodbye to any of them. 

…

She wonders, later, when the grief has dulled and the pain has lost some of its sting: did he leave because he thought she would argue him around? Did he avoid her because he knew, in his heart, that she would not let him walk into madness? Did he not speak to her because he did not want her to join him, or because he thought she would not let him go?

She does not think he’s so calculating. She does not like to think her husband can be so calculating, but-

But.

…

She goes to speak to Nolofinwë’s people who died on the Helcaraxë and are reborn, but they don’t seem very eager to talk. Anairë doesn’t blame them: she hadn’t left the safety of Aman, and hadn’t suffered their pain or their grief, and she cannot understand it. But there are things she needs from them, and she cannot just abandon them, so instead she uses the vast fortune left to her by Turukáno and Findekáno- abandoned, really, in the banks, but she’s the only one who’ll ever have access to it now- to buy a large neighborhood in the south-west corner of Tirion.

It isn’t even a neighborhood in truth: it’s been abandoned for decades now, the wood rotting and the stone crumbling. But Nolofinwë’s people have always been good builders, and she has a feeling that they’ll appreciate the work better than the forcible assimilation that Arafinwë’s pushing on them.

When she goes to Arafinwë with her plans, it’s the first time she’s gone to the castle since Arakáno’s death. 

It’s changed a great deal. Eärwen’s influence is seen in the silver accents and flowing curtains, where Anairë had always favored muted colors and heavier tapestries. Arafinwë, too, is king for a much diminished people; the politicking and jockeying for power that had been part and parcel of life in court has turned into the barest shadow of itself. Where it might have taken Eärwen weeks to get an appointment with Nolofinwë in an official capacity, all Anairë must do is send a messenger.

She waits in the outer corridor for Arafinwë to admit her, and fights not to pick at the heavy silk robes she’s worn for the first time in months. They’re uncomfortably large- Anairë’s lost too much weight to grief- and uncomfortably heavy, and she doesn’t know if that’s because she’s weaker or because she has less patience now for such discomforts. 

Then she sees the tapestry on the far wall, a few feet from the door to Arafinwë’s solar. It depicts their family. Their family, crowded around the base of Taniquetil. The lights of the bonfires leap up, high and shining, and glitter on their faces. Little Artanis is dancing, her silver-gold braids whipping around her fair head. And at the far end is Fëanáro, riding in on his horse of pale white foam, hair braided around a crown, eyes gleaming. 

But his sons are there already in the tapestry- Anairë recognizes Maitimo and his brilliant hair, and there’s six others beside him- and so is Finwë, his crown larger by far than any others, fire spouting from its ends, and so is Nerdanel, who Anairë knows hadn’t left Tirion until Fëanáro and his sons all left Aman.

This is not a tapestry of their history. This is a tapestry of what-might-have-been. 

“Princess Anairë,” murmurs a woman.

“Yes?”

“King Arafinwë is ready for you.”

Anairë steps inside, and Eärwen is within, with Arafinwë: silver hair plaited back into her customary three braids, tied off with leather strips and blue stone the shade of her eyes. The clothes she wears are Teleri in style; she’s never accommodated herself to fit the fashion of the court, and doesn’t seem to have started after inheriting the crown.

“Sister,” says Arafinwë, standing to embrace her.

Anairë straightens and dips into a swift curtsy so he cannot approach too close. She cannot bear that touch now; she hasn’t borne one since that last night with Nerdanel, and she will not bear her husband's brother’s now- it’s too paltry a replacement, and too much a reminder of all that she’s lost.

“My King,” says Anairë quietly. She lets her eyes lift to meet Eärwen’s gaze, which are still so terribly sad. “My Queen.”

“We were worried about you,” says Arafinwë. “We’ve worried about you for a long time, Anairë. I cannot say how glad I am that you are among us once more.”

“My son died,” says Anairë. _I wouldn’t think you’d understand that kind of pain._ But those words are harsh and sour, and too cruel by far for either of them. “It was… a shock. Ever more than their leaving.”

“And you’ve never been the halest of us all,” agrees Arafinwë. “Please. If ever there is another shock- another grief- come to us. Our homes and hearts are open to you: ever have you treated us as kin, and kin you remain in our own eyes.”

“You are too kind,” says Anairë. She swallows. “It’s for your kindness that I come to ask for a favor, Arafinwë.”

“A favor?”

“I’ve bought some land. A large plot- well, street, really, in the south-west corner of Tirion.”

“Whatever for?” asks Arafinwë, perplexed. “That area’s all but falling apart!”

“Yes. But there are a number of loyal followers of my husband who have been gifted with the chance of rebirth by Námo: and I owe them for Nolofinwë’s failures.” Careful, careful; Anairë must dance this part of the conversation with agility that her feet have almost forgotten. No lies, and only truth: but carefully cultivated truths. “He let them die, when they gave of the utmost to follow him into the Grinding Ice. A home is the least of what I can offer.”

“A ramshackle house more likely to crush them into death once more than be any livable place is _not_ advisable.”

“No, but a rehabilitation area of the city is,” says Anairë calmly. “A place where they can be among people that understand their pains. A place where they need not be anything other than what they are.”

Arafinwë’s hand twitches, as if to touch Anairë’s before he thinks better of it. “That is not your duty alone,” he says. “Nor is it your responsibility to make up for my brother’s mistakes- these Noldo chose their own fates.”

“They chose to follow Nolofinwë into the Helcaraxë,” says Anairë. “They would not have gone if they did not trust him. As a king my husband should have known better, but what is done is done; I cannot bring him back to Aman, but I can help his people. Our people.”

“I just don’t think-”

“Arafinwë,” says Eärwen suddenly. 

Anairë looks at her. Eärwen’s been strangely quiet through the conversation; but now she’s standing, and studying Anairë, and her lovely eyes are soft with something that looks far, far too similar to pity.

“Yes?”

They don’t look away from each other, and Anairë knows they’re speaking through their minds privately. She turns away and goes to the window, tapping her finger on the smooth stone hanging. Nolofinwë had always gotten cold quickly, so Anairë had covered the rooms he most favored in heavy tapestries and thick rugs, all the better for insulation. When he’d inhabited this study, the stone hanging had been covered over in a rough woolen weave. She cannot even remember seeing this hanging or its delicate carvings despite all the days she’s spent in the room.

“Anairë?” 

She hums in response.

Arafinwë says, heavily, “We accept your proposal. If the reborn are willing to inhabit it, you shall have no hindrance from the government.”

“Thank you,” says Anairë, turning finally to sweep another elaborate curtsy. “I’ll have the rest of the paperwork sent to you by tomorrow.”

…

(Eärwen catches up to her as Anairë is leaving, hand tightening bruise-firm on her arm. _Please,_ she says. _Please, Anairë-_

_Did it take you a long time to weave that tapestry?_

_Which tapestry?_

_The one you hung outside your husband’s study._

_I don’t understand,_ says Eärwen. 

_How long did it take you?_

_Not… long?_

_I especially loved the revisionism,_ Anairë tells her, and knows her voice to be too sweet, so sweet as to be venomous; but she cannot find it in herself to stop. _I especially loved the joy you portrayed as truth: all our family joined and contented with the joining._

_It was a dream._

_And how long before your dreams become our history?_ demands Anairë.

 _They are gone,_ whispers Eärwen.

This is too much. Anairë risks too much. But she is so angry, and she has almost forgotten what it feels like to be this angry: uncomplicated and furious and throbbing with it. 

_They are not dead,_ she says loudly. _And I will not let you turn them into the saints they are not.)_

…

It isn’t easy to get her husband’s people to speak to her, but Anairë has many long years of experience in being charming. She offers them a home and she offers them work, and she then goes to listen to their complaints and their joys, both petty and large. It isn’t easy; there are too many days when she wants nothing more than to curl up in Arakáno’s bed and weep, or simply look up at the stars and the new-formed moon until her eyes bleed silver and not salt. But beyond everything else Anairë wants to save her family, and that is worth the deep-carved exhaustion in her bones and the ache behind her eyes.

…

They move swifter, sacrificing subtlety for obfuscation. Nerdanel has enough projects spinning in the air that she can afford to add a few more without anyone’s notice. Anairë has enough projects spinning in the air that _she_ can afford to add a few more without anyone’s notice. 

“Where are you headed?” asks Anairë, looking up from the stacks of papers surrounding her desk to see Nerdanel wrapping her hair in a thick scarf. 

Nerdanel grimaces. “Formenos.”

“Formenos?” Anairë lays down the sheet of paper. “Why?”

“For Finwë’s ashes.” When Anairë only sends her an unimpressed glare, Nerdanel relents. “My husband had a number of projects he was working on before he left, and all those notes remain in Formenos. I don’t doubt the majority will be irretrievable now, but any lingering hints- if he was working on anything similar- would be invaluable.”

She still calls Fëanáro her husband, and not his name, never his name; Anairë finds the affectation both irritating and endearing. 

“The Valar will be interested,” says Anairë calmly.

Nerdanel shrugs a shoulder. “I’ll tell them I’m cleaning up after my family.”

And after so many years, it’s a known habit for both of them. Nerdanel cleans up after her family and Anairë pays her family’s debts, and they bear up under the indignity with steady grace. It often makes Anairë want to laugh: they’ve captured the hearts of the eldest princes of the Noldor, she and Nerdanel, and none of that had been with a romance of quiet acceptance or demure grace. The world truly does forget all that very, very quickly.

“If you do get Finwë’s ashes, bring them back” Anairë tells her. “He ought to be buried in his family courtyard. Not in that forsaken excuse of a castle.”

…

When she’d first met Nerdanel, Anairë had loathed her. This was all long years before they met as sisters-by-marriage; this was when Anairë’s father had needed to commission a piece from Mahtan and had brought his eldest daughter to teach her the art of negotiating while he was at it. Anairë had not been allowed to join dance- there were others, her father had told her, who were taller than her and lovelier too, and no daughter of his would ever be allowed to be anything less than what they could be. But here was Nerdanel, not ever quite so bulky or muscled as Mahtan’s other apprentices, but still allowed to do as she wished: allowed with such freedom, in fact, that she was hailed as the best stonecarver in all of Arda.

Nerdanel, who had seven sons and a loving husband; who was fairer by far and fiercer without question; who represented every reason for Anairë’s grief.

It would be easier for her to hate Nerdanel, but Anairë’s always been too smart for her own good. 

(And, in the end, so has Nerdanel.)

Hatred, in the end, is too simple.

…

They move to Alqualondë and offer their services to Olwë: Anairë for her children, and Nerdanel for her husband. 

“A monument of the past,” says Nerdanel. She does not often attempt to look presentable before court, preferring to stay in the leathers and wool of her studio attire, but when she does it’s the more remarkable for it. Her clothes are simple but flattering, and turn her already-striking looks into something truly memorable, especially in the glittering pearl-and-diamond court of Olwë, where everyone wears clothes far more revealing than anyone would dream of in Tirion. “For remembrance and for grief. We know we can never do anything for you that can replace those you have lost, King Olwë, but we wish to do something- as wives, and mothers, and queens, of those who did such heinous acts.”

Olwë takes a long time to answer. When he does, it’s in a voice of grating stone and exhaustion. 

“We cannot ask for you to pay for that which your people did,” he says. “As we do not burden a son with a father’s sins, we do not place your husband’s sins on your shoulders.”

“It is a burden I accept freely,” says Nerdanel. “As a queen, if not a wife.”

“And you, Queen Anairë? Do you say the same?”

“Yes,” says Anairë. “I do.”

“A monument,” says Olwë. The sun shines down on his crown, and pearls the size of his fists shine back, bright as the Silmarils. His hair, silver and smooth, is the same as Eärwen’s hair, and his eyes are as blue as the sea right outside. Once, he’d been ageless and beautiful as any of the Eldar, but now the pains of grief have worn him down into someone grim and cold, like sand sheared away to reveal bare granite beneath. “Yes. If given freely, if given with kindness- we will accept.”

Anairë bows deeply, so her hair falls over her face. In the darkness of the shadows, she lets the faintest of smiles curl over her lips.

…

(She kisses him, in her dreams, with warmth and with rage. She dreams of his hands on her waist, his shoulders under her fingers, his laughter like a boom of thunder. In her dreams, they are king and queen: their crowns run like liquid gold down their spines. 

Sometimes, the dreams change to ice and dust, and Nolofinwë’s hands are cold on her spine, and the silver of his gaze is the color of the steel of his sword. Those are the best dreams: the ones where she wakes knowing what she’s lost. There are worse dreams, of course; of Nolofinwë’s knives in her body, and his screams in her ears, and the blood of Alqualondë on her hands. 

But the worst dreams are when they don’t change, and she wakes up warm, and it is reality that reminds her of what she’s lost.)

…

They build a monument, Nerdanel crafting the stone and Anairë crafting the message. 

It’s a grand monument, a statue large enough to cup the docks in a stone hand; on each finger is carved the names of those who died at Alqualondë. They requisition a warehouse on the docks. There are pieces of dust and wood and stone everywhere. 

In the very back, under a tarp cloth, the blocks of marble gives way to salt-smoothed wood.

…

…

Eärwen is with her mother when Anairë screams through her mind: _Eärwen, you have to come, you have to- quickly! Quickly! Now!_

“Anairë,” says Eärwen to her mother, in brief explanation. “I- she’s- I have to go.”

“A problem?” asks her mother, rising to her feet and brows pulling together.

Eärwen tries not to wince when Anairë’s screams go higher. 

“An urgent one, I think.” 

She steps forwards to the balcony, measuring the angles down the cliffs. It’s been a long time since she had to move so swiftly down to the beaches- Eärwen avoids them as much as she can- but Anairë also doesn’t sound like she’s going to be able to wait for that long. Her skirts are heavier now, and it will be more difficult to scale downwards, but- but she has a feeling it will be necessary.

She hesitates for a moment and then she folds the hem of her skirt into her waistband, shrugs at her mother, and clambers over the balcony railing. 

…

Anairë’s in the dock-based workshop that she and Nerdanel have commandeered. It’s too quiet inside; they aren’t anywhere in the front sections. Eärwen shuts down her bond with Anairë- she’s too close now to get anything other than echoes with this level of hysteria- and pushes through thick pieces of tarp and heavy marble until she finally comes to them.

 _“Eärwen,”_ says Anairë.

She’s hunched over Nerdanel’s body, who’s splayed out on pale wood, her bright hair spilling over. For a moment, Eärwen doesn’t understand why Anairë’s hands are tangled in Nerdanel’s hair; then she realizes that Anairë’s hands are red with _blood,_ not hair. 

“What happened?”

“We were- talking,” says Anairë, distraught. She presses a hand to her hair, sitting back on her heels. 

Eärwen moves forwards quickly and touches Nerdanel’s wrist, looking her over for injuries. There’s a lot of blood seeping from a head wound, and darker, redder blood from a deep, sharp cut running from where her shoulder meets her neck down to the meat of her shoulderblade. 

“Anairë,” says Eärwen. “What _happened?”_

“We were _talking,”_ says Anairë. “It was- she was fine- and then the board slipped, the nail- it was free- I didn’t- I tried to stop it- but the _blood-”_

“Alright,” says Eärwen. “Alright, it’s fine. She’ll be fine. I’m here.” She tries to pitch her voice to soothe, as she hasn’t had to for too many years. “It probably won’t even scar, Anairë. Not if I can get her to a healer in time.” 

“You’re a healer,” says Anairë. “That’s why I- that’s why I called you.”

“I can keep her alive,” says Eärwen carefully. “But I’m not the best healer in Aman. It would make more sense for you to…”

“No other healers.”

“Anairë-”

“No other healers,” she repeats. 

“That’s… probably not going to be possible.”

“Keep her alive,” says Anairë, voice going high and sharp with distress. “Keep her alive. We’ll explain everything later. Promise.” Eärwen blinks, and Anairë presses a hand to her shoulder, scarcely seeing the blood- it seems- that’s turning her skin tacky. _“Please.”_

It’s been so long since Anairë even looked at Eärwen. It’s been even longer since Anairë looked at Eärwen with eyes that don’t shine with disgust or hatred. And Eärwen misses her friend, in a manner that she doesn’t even miss her children.

Eärwen turns back to Nerdanel and starts to sing a song of healing.

…

Later, she sees the way the floor beneath her is not made of marble or shale-stone, and how the wood is smoothed in the manner that only salt and water can manage. She sees the etching curve of a prow, beginning to take hold, a few feet away from Nerdanel’s prone body. What pushes everything together in her mind is the long, straight column that sits in a groove on the boat, made of marble but otherwise indistinguishable from a mast.

And then there’s the guilt on Anairë’s face, of course, when she returns, face and hands washed, but clothes still stained scarlet.

“How is it?”

“She’ll recover,” says Eärwen crisply. “It won’t be very pretty- the scar on her shoulder- but it won’t hinder any movement. And the head-wound just bled badly; they tend to do that. I’m sure Nerdanel’s had worse incidents before.”

“I panicked,” Anairë admits. 

“Yes, I can see that.” Eärwen folds her arms over her chest. “The question is why.”

“Because of a lot of reasons.”

“Because of one reason, I think.”

Anairë blanches. “Eärwen-”

“There’s a few reasons to build a boat as large as this one,” says Eärwen flatly. “But there’s only one that I can imagine for hiding it from everyone.”

“It’s part of our memorial display,” says Nerdanel.

Anairë turns to look at her, desperate for aid, and Nerdanel hauls herself upright, one hand going to the shoulder patched over with seaweed. Her face is very white, and when she speaks her voice is strained, but there’s no mention of the pain that must surely be overwhelming in severity to her. Eärwen hadn’t expected her to wake up so quickly.

“Memorial display?” she asks.

“Yes!” exclaims Anairë. “Memorial display! We wanted- we weren’t sure if it would be tasteless or not- but we wanted to have it done and-”

“-see if King Olwë allows it,” Nerdanel finishes smoothly. 

Eärwen rises and approaches the sides of the boat. It’s well-done, but clearly constructed by inexpert hands. There’s a reason why Fëanáro had- 

She tries to cut the thought off without saying anything, but then she sees Nerdanel’s eyes- pale and sharp and tense, and she finishes it deliberately, letting the emotions grate against her bones.

There’s a reason why Fëanáro had stolen the boats from the Teleri, and not simply built his own.

“I would believe you,” says Eärwen calmly, “if not for the fact that every word you’ve spoken to me since waking has been a lie.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“A crown does not make you all-knowing,” says Nerdanel, tilting her head up.

“All-knowing?” Eärwen scoffs. “I do not need so much knowledge, Nerdanel. Neither of you are quite as good at lying as you think you are.” She holds up a hand when Anairë makes a wordless sound of protest. “And there’s only one thing I want to know, really, at the end of all this: _why.”_

“Why,” says Nerdanel. She laughs, short and sharp, like gratings of broken glass, and Eärwen knows the next words she’ll speak will be the truth. “You dare to ask us _why_ when- when they’re all there?”

“Why didn’t you go with them when they first left?” asks Eärwen, turning around.

“Because I didn’t think this would happen,” says Nerdanel. “I trusted my husband one time too many.”

“You trusted him?”

“To take care of my children? To not die? Yes.”

“I think Fëanáro has enough sins not to lay dying at the wrong time on his shoulders,” says Eärwen wryly, only for Nerdanel’s face to twist into a rictus of fury and struggle to her feet.

Anairë reaches out and grinds her fingers into Nerdanel’s injured shoulder, forcing Nerdanel to gasp wetly and collapse backwards. “Don’t mention his name,” she tells Eärwen. 

“Who- Fea-” 

“Yes,” says Anairë. “Him. She doesn’t like hearing his name. It doesn’t make sense, but.” She shrugs, as if to say, _grief, you know?_ and then arches an eyebrow at Eärwen. “Is that all you want to know?”

“I don’t-” Eärwen breathes out long and slow. Holds onto her temper and her ability to reason; she’ll need it in the face of Nerdanel’s ferocity and Anairë’s oratory. “No. Was any of it real?”

“Was any of what real?” asks Anairë.

“This. This- repentance.”

“Of course it was real,” says Nerdanel harshly. “Of course it is: we are the queens of the Noldor who left, and the wives of the kings of those who left. When I wed my husband, Finwë told me that there are debts that we shall have to bear that no other shall need, simply because of who I was wedding. I shall repent for my sons and for my husband every day of my life if necessary.”

“But clearly not,” says Eärwen. “Because you’re leaving the people you owe the repentance to.”

“After we’ve paid it,” Anairë points out quietly.

Eärwen snorts. “This is not a one-time debt!”

“Yes, well, they don’t get to use my sons as a shield against the world either,” says Nerdanel. She gets up, gingerly, and then moves to a work-table covered in papers. Most of the ones above are either ship blueprints or clearly the plans for the statues, but underneath are maps. She unrolls one and stabs at it until Eärwen goes to join her. “My sons are protecting Beleriand: their castles are here and here and here. A shield against Morgoth.” Her voice and her hands don’t shake, but there’s something- some note, some fragile edge- to both that makes Eärwen wary. “I went to Formenos and saw what happened there, when Morgoth wanted those Silmarils. The destruction. The sheer power. And this was when my husband had the time to build fortifications.”

“So you don’t think they’re enough.”

“I know they’re not enough,” says Nerdanel, turning haunted eyes back to Eärwen. “It’s why I know I have to go.”

“To what end?” asks Eärwen. “They’re- two queens are not going to be worth anything, Nerdanel. Not even the scraps of anything. You’ll hold no power, and no armies, and-”

“-and that’s the same mistake that everyone’s been making from the beginning,” says Anairë.

Eärwen turns to her. “What mistake?”

“That we need an army.”

“You _do_ need an army.”

“No,” says Anairë patiently. “We’ll never beat Morgoth in arms or power. Last time it took all the Vala before he could even be captured. And now none of them seem inclined to do much about him so long as he doesn’t attack Aman, or something equally as destructive.”

“With my sons all but guaranteed to be the first casualties,” whispers Nerdanel.

Eärwen sighs. “So. Not an army. Not power. Then what?”

“Intelligence. Planning.” Anairë folds her arms over her chest, and her lips pull up into the barest hint of a smirk. “Audacity.”

“The two of you,” says Eärwen. “Against all of Morgoth’s forces. It’s impossible.”

“Not impossible. Difficult. Very difficult, even. But not impossible.”

“Anairë-”

“We’ve developed weapons over these years that you couldn’t dream of,” says Nerdanel tonelessly. Eärwen turns to her, and sees a stone token resting in her palm. She takes it and inspects it: good knotwork, and intricately-fashioned in the stone, but surely not even the finest of Nerdanel’s creations. “This can fool a Vala.”

“Fool a-” Eärwen bites her tongue. “Fool a _Vala?”_

She can’t quite help looking over her shoulder. Surely they would- the Valar would not-

“They don’t actively watch us,” says Nerdanel, shrugging. “We’d have been found out by now if they were.”

 _“Anairë,”_ says Eärwen. She can expect this kind of treason from Nerdanel- she’d married _Fëanáro,_ what more excuse does she need?- but Anairë? Sweet, soft Anairë, who listened to Eärwen, who held her for those long days after Alqualondë before Arafinwë returned- how _could_ she? “This is madness!”

“Perhaps it is,” says Anairë softly. “My son is dead, Eärwen. My son is dead, and my husband could not save him, and I will never forget that. Nerdanel’s eldest son was imprisoned for thirty years, and _she_ will never forget that. And our people- how many of our people! Dead!” She shakes her head, and there are tears standing out in her eyes. “It is our right. It is our duty. As mother and queen.”

“I’m queen now.”

“Then come with us, if you wish it. But this is what I choose.”

“Come with us?” asks Nerdanel sharply. “You cannot-”

“I need time,” says Eärwen.

“You have time,” says Anairë calmly. She holds out a hand, stopping Eärwen from leaving. “But before you go: you asked me not to go with Nolofinwë, and I listened to you, and for that you repaid me by abandoning me to die in my grief.”

Eärwen blinks at the words, delivered in such an even voice that it makes the sting of the words worse.

“Do you think I didn’t try to enter your home?” she whispers.

Anairë pushes a lock of hair over her shoulder and doesn’t look away from Eärwen. “Not enough,” she says.

“This is cruel of you.”

“Perhaps it is,” Anairë says again. “But it is necessary. My family is in danger, Eärwen, and there is nothing I will not do for them. You must know that.”

“Don’t,” says Eärwen. “This vengeance is-”

Merited. Cruel. Unnecessary. Necessary.

All true.

It’s every word that Eärwen’s feared from Anairë’s mouth for the past decades. Arakáno’s death, and the silent blame that she never quite voiced to Eärwen. All the heaviest guilts on Eärwen’s spine.

“Not vengeance,” says Anairë, spreading her hands. 

And she’s probably even telling the truth; she’s never been the kind to be vengeful or hurtful for the sake of it. But in pursuit of something else… 

Well. Anairë’s always been ruthless. It’s well-concealed behind her soft hands and her large eyes, but she’d once been a good queen to Nolofinwë- and it had been her name behind some of the harsher rulings. She’s never shrunk from necessity.

“Weregild,” says Anairë. “For what you owe me.”

“And what’s your payment?” asks Eärwen tiredly.

“Silence.”

Nerdanel breathes out slowly, leaning back against the table, eyes bright with both pain and amusement. Eärwen bites back the instinctive urge to snap at her and nods at Anairë. 

“Very well,” she says. “I won’t communicate any of this to anyone. The debts between us are paid then?”

Anairë inclines her head, and Eärwen turns on her heel, stalking out of the warehouse. She doesn’t pause until she’s at the beaches where Fëanáro slaughtered her people: Eärwen knows it because the sand is smooth here, all the jewels and shells washed off with the blood. She sinks into the sand up to her ankles and looks up at the stars, ever-visible from Alqualondë.

 _Madness,_ thinks Eärwen. 

She wraps her arms around herself, and looks up at the stars, and reaches down into the hollows of her soul where her children reside, all the bonds gone into quiescence from the distance. She misses them too. She misses them so much.

_It’s madness._

_But still-_

Eärwen breathes in salt and sand and damp fish. She closes her eyes.

_Still._

…

She’d promised Anairë not to tell anyone.

She had not promised Anairë not to stop her.

…

“Anairë.”

“Eärwen.”

“We need to talk.”

Anairë spreads her hands. “Let’s talk.”

“You don’t need to do this.”

“I don’t-” Anairë pauses, looking at her. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t need to do this? Fine, then! It’s not a need, I’ll concede that much. But it’s a desire so deep I cannot bear anything else.”

“You stayed back once before, when it would have been easier for you to leave!”

“And maybe I would have left,” says Anairë.

Eärwen freezes. “What?”

“Maybe I would have left.”

“You would _not.”_

“Are you so certain, Eärwen?” Anairë rocks backwards on her heels. “I am not. If you had not kept me back- if you had not hidden me away that night, when everyone was leaving and everything was so chaotic- if I’d met with my husband- I don’t know what I would have done.”

Eärwen shakes her head. Her blood feels very cold in her veins. “You were- I saw you, after your argument with Írissë. You were not in any condition to speak to anyone. To go anywhere.”

“I never told anyone about that,” says Anairë contemplatively, quietly. “I’d almost forgotten about it.” A bitter smile sits on her face. “Oh, if it was my choice alone, I would remain in Aman: vengeance has never held much fascination for me.”

“I _know._ Which is why I don’t know why you’ve allowed Nerdanel to convince you to-”

“Nerdanel didn’t convince me.”

“I,” says Eärwen. “Excuse me?”

“Nerdanel didn’t convince me, Eärwen: I convinced her.” Anairë lifts her chin. “We decided when she came into my home by filing down the hinges, two months after Arakáno’s death.”

“No.”

“We’ve been working towards it ever after.”

“No,” says Eärwen. “No, no, _no._ You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong. You said it yourself, just now! If it’s your choice alone you’d remain here!”

“But my children are there,” says Anairë quietly. “And my husband. Nerdanel put it very well a few days ago, you know, that when our children are born we swear to be their shields. And now we’ve sent them to be the world’s shield against Morgoth. What nonsense!”

Eärwen closes her eyes. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you, is there?”

“I love you,” says Anairë. Her hand presses on Eärwen’s elbow, and she opens her eyes to see Anairë closer, grey eyes gleaming. “This hurts me. I never wanted this, and in a perfect Arda I would remain in Aman for all the years of my life. Like the tapestry you hung outside Arafinwë’s study.”

Eärwen chokes on a laugh. “But we live in Arda marred.”

“And there are things I will never forgive of myself if I do not do them.”

“Very well.” Eärwen nods, and reaches up, and grips Anairë’s wrists, and makes her decision. She looks down on Anairë, and bends forwards so their foreheads are pressed together. “I don’t agree with you. That’s- true. But...”

“Eärwen,” whispers Anairë.

Her breath smells like nuts and pine, and Eärwen remembers a time- just before she met Arafinwë, when she didn’t know that Anairë was courting Nolofinwë- when she wanted to kiss her, and court her, and make her _hers._ It had been so long ago that she’s forgotten it, or simply not wanted to remember. 

That life would have been a simpler one. A quieter one. 

_But not a better one,_ thinks Eärwen. 

Her children are there in Beleriand. And her sons are there, as well, holding the Siege of Angband. They’ve abandoned her, but they have been abandoned in turn as well, have they not? 

Eärwen is many things. She is not quite so craven as to watch others walk into death as they save her world and her family.

“The two of you are not enough,” she whispers. 

“There’s no one else we can ask.”

“There is one person.”

Anairë pulls away and steps back a few feet, pressing the back of her wrist to her mouth. Her eyes are shimmering with the beginning of tears. 

“Who?” she asks. “Indis? Findis? Your husband? We are all that is _left,_ of us all! Of our family, of every damned person in this island, we are all that is left who care for those who have gone! There is nobody else!”

“You have me,” says Eärwen.

Anairë snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not.”

“A few moments ago you wanted me to stay here in Aman, and now you’re willing to change your mind completely?”

“I’m willing to do what must be done,” says Eärwen. She spreads her fingers on the smooth wood railing under her palm, for both stability and reassurance. “Because if it is the two of you alone, it will not be enough. Look me in the eye and tell me that it will!”

“We can manage,” says Anairë coldly.

“Can you? Neither of you are healers. And I am a fair bit better at singing than either of you.”

“This is madness.”

“Perhaps it is,” says Eärwen, and smiles wryly. “But if you are to do this, then let us do it properly. If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

…

_If you are set on leaving, I will not let you kill yourself in this venture._

_If you are so set on leaving, dear heart, I will save you._

_Even from yourself._


	2. how do we name the pain of rage in a woman? mother?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stupid elleth!” snaps Eärwen, shoving Nerdanel into the downstairs bunker. “We can do without an incident for at least a few hours!”
> 
> “Oh, surely not,” says Anairë wryly. “Her sons got it from somewhere, Eärwen.”
> 
> “From Fëanáro, I thought.”
> 
> “They’ve enough of it that they got it from both sides of their family.”
> 
> “Stop disparaging my sons,” groans Nerdanel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BANTZ!!!

“No,” says Nerdanel.

“We do need the help.”

“It’s nonsense.” She resists the urge to take Anairë by the shoulder and give her a good shake. _“Nonsense,_ do you understand?”

“Nerdanel- we need the help! Do _you_ know healing?” Anairë folds her arms and leans backwards. “And Eärwen’s better at knives than either of us.”

“Because that will help us against orcs,” says Nerdanel coldly.

“Because that will help us get food,” says Anairë. “Don’t tell me you were planning to pack provisions for the entirety of the literal months it will take us to reach Angband!”

 _Tyelkormo enjoys hunting more than all your sons put together._ But Nerdanel bites her tongue instead of saying anything more incendiary. “Hunting and healing,” she says aloud. “And what else?”

“What… else?”

“Keep in mind that Eärwen’s presence means we need to edit all our plans,” Nerdanel tells her. “A third person- it’s automatically more than half as likely that we’ll get caught with three people instead of two. It’s going to mean more sleepless nights. More arguments, and more provisions that need to be packed away quietly, and more _lies.”_

“Not to mention the fact that you don’t like her.”

Nerdanel rolls her eyes. “I’d prefer not to be on a boat with her for however long it will take us to reach, yes. But that’s not the primary reason.”

“And what’s your ‘primary reason?’” asks Anairë.

“You know how hard we’ve been training.” Nerdanel plants her feet. “Eärwen doesn’t have any of that.”

“She’s always been good at speed and stealth,” says Anairë. “Better than both of us, at least.” Her eyes narrow. “And you’re not usually this bull-headed.”

Nerdanel inhales slowly, through her teeth. “Fine. Can you trust her?”

“With my life. With _your_ life.” Anairë lifts an eyebrow. “It’s her children too, over there.”

“And it was her brothers over here,” says Nerdanel. She snorts. “If any of your children had killed Nerdalië, I wouldn’t be raring to go to Beleriand.”

“Which is why you aren’t Eärwen,” says Anairë, in a tone that sounds like she’s losing patience swiftly.

“Fine,” says Nerdanel, snapping the map closed and sliding it away. She eyes Anairë closely, and doesn’t turn back. “I won’t stop her from coming. But she carries just as much weight as either of us: no skipping out on training. If Arafinwë gets suspicious, that’s on her to deal with.”

Anairë sighs, the tension fading from her shoulders. “That shouldn’t be a problem: he’s still in Tirion. We don’t know if he’ll make it here in time for the unveiling.”

To that, Nerdanel blinks. Then blinks again, and finally winces. “If he doesn’t make it, she might not get to say goodbye.”

“She won’t get to tell him goodbye in so many words,” agrees Anairë. “But… it’s not ideal, I agree. Eärwen’s trying to work through it.”

“Two months,” says Nerdanel. She tries to smile, but she has a feeling it comes out as more of a grimace. Anairë’s face is far too stiff for it to have been anything else. “Well. How time flies, does it not?”

“It’s rather frightening,” says Anairë. “But also exciting.” She manages to smile, though it’s wan and pale. “I can imagine how my husband felt when he left, I think, now: the fear and the joy, in equal measure.”

“Ah, but theirs would have been less joy and more fear,” Nerdanel points out. “For he was leaving you behind, and now you are going to him.”

“And more fear still, now, if he knows I am coming!” Anairë’s eyes shine with glee, but there’s a hint of the anger that Nerdanel knows still simmers in her gut. “Nolofinwë did get the raw end of the deal, did he not?”

“Such is the reward for foolishness,” says Nerdanel wryly, and Anairë laughs, true and loud, and Nerdanel manages to lift her lips into a smile as well.

…

They cannot match others for strength. 

Nerdanel- _perhaps,_ but her muscles are built for hauling stone; she’s got a strong back and good thighs and steady arms. Not the kind of muscles necessary for battle, which require a better core and flexibility. Neither Eärwen nor Anairë can so much as lift some of the heavier weaponry- Eärwen’s too willowy, and Anairë’s too short- so they tailor their methods for speed and efficiency above all else.

Up and down and out, and they work hard enough to make their movements instinct instead of thought. So their bodies will remember what their minds might forget, in the heat of battle.

…

Finally, it comes time to tell Eärwen their plan. It’s two weeks until they are planning to leave; Nerdanel can put it off no longer.

“So we land in…”

“The northern part,” says Anairë. “Close to Mount Taras. There’s a settlement there of Turukáno’s people, though apparently he’s not there himself- he’s building another city, a hidden one.”

“One that everyone knows about,” says Eärwen dubiously.

Anairë snorts. “They lost three elves to a stone fall ten summers ago- they were the ones who told me, after they were reborn.”

“They told you.” Eärwen’s jaw works. “They _told_ you?”

“She didn’t build the Nolofinwëan quarter for herself,” says Nerdanel, arching an eyebrow, all too amused. 

“I convinced Arafinwë to give you that neighborhood!”

Nerdanel holds up her hands. “And we’re very, ah, thankful for it.”

Eärwen eyes glow with temper; Nerdanel waits for the flash-point and her shouting, but Eärwen doesn’t do anything. Her hands clench on the table and she breathes out, slow and deep, and then turns to the map. “And then?”

“And then we follow the mountains,” Nerdanel tells her, tracing the curve of the peaks with a finger. “To the Fen of Serech, if we can, and heading north after that, where we’ll be on Morgoth’s lands.”

“We’ve multiple contingencies depending on what happens,” says Anairë. “If there are orcs, or if they’ve taken over some major areas- we’ll need to rethink it. We’d prefer to stay in the mountains because it’ll be easier to disappear if necessary, and there aren’t too many cities embedded in the mountains, but… the plans are flexible.”

“It will not be easy,” murmurs Eärwen. But her eyes are bright when she looks up at Nerdanel, and she does not look like she’s thinking of shrinking from her fear. “What are your plans for when we reach Thangorodrim?”

Nerdanel tosses her the token that she’s spent the past fifty years perfecting. “My husband was a very smart man,” she tells Eärwen. “But he was always too quick to think his ideas perfected. Do you remember the wine jugs he made that could get even an Ainur drunk?”

“I- yes?”

“That token’s a highly distilled form of it,” says Nerdanel, nodding to it, and Eärwen’s face goes alarmed, and she sets it down gingerly on the table. “Made from optimal material and in a better shape, and it needs only proximity to work. It’s how we’re planning to row out of Alqualondë without angering Ulmo- embed enough of these in the hull and the railings, and he’ll think it’s a sea creature. Carry enough of them into Angamando and we can capture both Sauron’s and Morgoth’s attention for long enough to take the Silmarils.”

“You’ve tested them?” asks Eärwen.

Anairë grins, sharp as honed steel. “On both Aulë and Estë.”

“And they _succumbed?”_

“Why do you think we’ve kept it quiet?” asks Nerdanel, flipping one over her fingers. “My husband was a fool- you never tell someone you’re planning to destroy that you’re _planning to destroy them._ Better to slide a knife into their heart and make it look like their husband did it. Or, in this case, a jealous Maia. Much more believable.”

“It’ll only work if everything goes perfectly,” says Eärwen.

“We know,” says Nerdanel dryly. “That’s why we’ve been planning for a hundred years. It’s why we’ll be ready.” 

Eärwen swallows, inclining her head to give Nerdanel the point. “And what are your plans to get out of Angband?”

“After we’ve gotten the Silmarils?” Anairë exchanges a look with Nerdanel, then sighs and plucks up a paper from beneath the rest of the stack, handing it over. 

Eärwen takes it, and skims it. She reaches the end, and then she reads it again, and reads it one more time, seemingly unable to believe it. Nerdanel scratches at her nose, hiding the smirk threatening on her lips, and a moment later, Eärwen drags out a chair and sinks into it, still unable to look away from the page. 

“The implications of this,” she breathes, finally looking up- not to Anairë, but at Nerdanel- with eyes that are already considering the effects, “they’re staggering. Leave aside the tokens, Nerdanel; this is going to change _everything.”_

“If there was ever one thing I never thought I’d have to tell my husband, a lack of vision was never one of them,” agrees Nerdanel. “I simply… took the majority of his ideas to their logical conclusions.”

“The Valar are going to want to destroy this.”

Nerdanel smiles, thin and cruel, and knows it to be the same smile that her sons must have smiled when driving Morgoth back into his damned hole. “Knowledge is not so easily disappeared.”

Námo might have their fëa in perpetuity, but even he cannot keep them forever; Nerdanel’s learned that all it takes to leave his Halls is repentance, and forgiveness, neither of which are emotions under Námo’s purview. The Ainur have power that Nerdanel cannot imagine, but they are not infallible; and it is past time that the elves demonstrate their knowledge of it.

“Formenos is not ash,” she says. “It should be. For the powers that Morgoth and Ungoliant had at that time, after consuming the Trees- for all that Morgoth threw at the doors- it should have become ash, and all those within utterly destroyed. But my sons survived to return to Tirion, and all their household besides.” She spreads her hands wide. “There were more shields on Formenos than anyone ever suspected, and if anyone had ventured there before I did, they would have found it out as well. ‘Twas laziness that kept the Valar from finding it out. Laziness and complacency, and I will not reward them for it.”

“You are Fea- your husband’s- match,” says Eärwen thoughtfully. “We all forget that too quickly.”

“Wisdom is not just in silence,” murmurs Nerdanel.

“It might work,” agrees Eärwen, thumbing the papers. “It might just work. If we’re lucky, and if we’re brave enough, and if we’re strong enough.”

“We’ll do what we can,” says Anairë. “For our family, and our people, and ourselves. Do you understand why we’re the only ones who can do this, Eärwen?”

Anairë is very, _very_ good at convincing people. Nerdanel studies her for a moment, thinking; the last time Nerdanel had spoken to Eärwen, she’d been convinced the princess would never join them, not for anything. But Eärwen’s not only changed her mind: she’s _completely_ changed it, to the tune of becoming a co-conspirator. 

It takes more than the memory of friendship to do that.

Nerdanel does not like either of them very much: Anairë’s always been too quick to bend to her husband’s wishes, and Eärwen too quick to avoid her husband instead of fighting for her opinions. They are too different, and too caught up in their own troubles, and Nerdanel’s never mourned that lack of a relationship overmuch. 

But these past years have forced them together, towards their shared goals, and a strange sort of respect has grown in Nerdanel’s chest as she recognizes their strength, even as she doesn’t understand it.

Eärwen’s eyes gleam. “Yes,” she says, and Nerdanel’s hands feel warmer than they’ve felt in centuries.

…

They reveal their sculpture of repentance to Olwë a fortnight later, and dance in gowns of silver and scarlet and oceanic blue. Nerdanel lets herself enjoy the wine, for she’s certain she won’t have any in the near future; it had been difficult enough to install a desalination instrument in the boat, but with it they don’t need to worry about packing freshwater. It won’t taste very nice, but they won’t die of dehydration either.

They go to bed at midnight, after the majority of people have slept. Nerdanel waits on her balcony, heart in her throat. 

“The beds aren’t very comfortable on the boat,” says Anairë. She must have let herself in moments earlier; Nerdanel doesn’t remember hearing her knock.

Nerdanel doesn’t turn around, though she isn’t quite surprised that Anairë can’t sleep either. “I find sleep difficult to come when there’s so much to do.”

“And yet you aren’t doing any of them.”

“No.” Nerdanel laughs, softly. “I also find it difficult to do things when the anticipation is so heavy in my bones. Just a few more hours, Anairë. Just a few more hours, for the culmination of a century’s worth of work.”

“A few more hours for the beginning of a culmination of a hundred years’ work.” 

“You’re right,” says Nerdanel, huffing another laugh. She feels rather punch-drunk. “I wonder what Fëanáro would say if he could see me now. I wonder what- Maitimo, and Makalaure, and all the rest- what _they_ would say.”

“I’m sure the other five of your sons would be saddened to see themselves relegated to _the rest,”_ says Anairë wryly.

“Pah, they all knew their places.”

Nerdanel sneaks a look over her shoulder, where Anairë’s standing in the entryway of the balcony, hair brushed and unbraided down her shoulder. In the moonlight, stripped of all pretense, she looks eerily similar to Nerdalië- slender and fine-boned and delicate as a spire of ice. 

“Eärwen’s telling Arafinwë,” whispers Anairë suddenly.

“Oh dear.” Nerdanel rolls her head onto her other shoulder. “Should we be fearful?”

“Not fearful, perhaps. But… wary. Arafinwë’s never dealt well with people pushing him into things he doesn’t want to do.”

“No,” agrees Nerdanel. “I mean, the full pressure of both his brothers only bore him to the beginning of the Helcaraxë. I wouldn’t want to be Eärwen.”

“You never want to be Eärwen,” says Anairë, laughing into the back of her palm.

“Who’d want her _hair?”_ asks Nerdanel, mock-horrified, and smothers her smile beneath the last swallow of her wine as Anairë steps forwards, shoulders knocking Nerdanel’s own.

…

Anairë’s prediction of Eärwen’s conversation proves true, in the end; they’ve both ended up seated on the balcony, heads pressed against the balustrade and legs stretched out in front of them, when Eärwen bursts inside, her nightgown flapping.

“We have to _go,”_ she hisses. 

“Arafinwë didn’t take it well?” drawls Nerdanel.

Eärwen bristles like a porcupine. “No,” she snaps. “I had to knock him out. And tie him up. And board up the door to our rooms. And I _still_ don’t know how long it’ll keep him!”

“Fine, fine,” sighs Nerdanel, drawing herself up. She picks up the pack on her bed and snaps her fingers at Anairë until she gets up and disappears into her chambers. Then she turns back to Eärwen. “He’ll forgive you, you know.”

“Will he?” she asks bitterly.

“Just because you are not him, you cannot believe him to be the same as his brothers,” says Nerdanel quietly. “Arafinwë will forgive you. Especially if we are successful.”

“A Silmaril forgives all sins?”

“Something like that,” says Nerdanel, putting a hand on Eärwen’s shoulder. She smiles, and propels Eärwen out of the castle, down to the warehouse where their escape hides. “Something quite like that.”

…

They cannot rely on the winds, so Nerdanel’s built statues that can row them out of Alqualondë. It puts a strain on her fëa to get them to move, but Nerdanel is nothing if not strong in spirit. She remains standing as they set sail, and remains standing as the sun rises, and remains standing until the last speck of Valinor disappears into the horizon. 

Only then does she allow herself to collapse.

…

…

“Stupid elleth!” snaps Eärwen, shoving Nerdanel into the downstairs bunker. “We can do without an incident for at least a few hours!”

“Oh, surely not,” says Anairë wryly. “Her sons got it from somewhere, Eärwen.”

“From Fëanáro, I thought.”

“They’ve enough of it that they got it from both sides of their family.”

“Stop disparaging my sons,” groans Nerdanel, and Anairë refuses to acknowledge the well of relief that springs to her throat when Nerdanel sounds- fine.

“I’d stop doing that if I thought it would help you,” Anairë says airily.

“Why is it that I’m always getting you out of trouble?” demands Eärwen, ignoring Anairë.

Nerdanel sighs. “Because I overextended myself. Getting the statues to move as quickly and as coordinatedly- was not easy. I should have practiced before this, but I didn’t.” Her eyes flicker. “That’s on me.”

“We can help you, you stubborn _sar’hröa,”_ says Eärwen, but her voice is softer. She’s always been partial to those who accept blame easily.

“I’ll set up a roster,” agrees Anairë. “We’ll do it as well. And we can go slowly; better we arrive in Beleriand with rest and strength than exhaustion.”

The others agree, and Anairë heads up to the deck, feeling the wind pressing against her face. 

She breathes deep. Lets herself stare at the water, shining so bright under the sun that it hurts her eyes. Her heart is clenching in her chest, because Anairë has chosen, and there is no going back. Not any longer. They must be successful, or they will fail, and if they fail, there shall be no songs of the three of them. They’ve been too quiet for failure to accomplish anything; their only recourse is success.

Ulmo thinks their boat is a dolphin, skimming through the waves. His maia will think the same. But they are _here,_ and soon- soon, if not soon enough for Anairë’s desires- they will be in Endórë, and then- oh, then, things will move _quickly._

 _Fine, then,_ thinks Anairë, wind streaming through her hair. _It’s a simple solution: we won’t fail._

…

The first flush of excitement fades into monotony soon enough. The winds are fair sometimes, and Eärwen guides their boat to take advantage of it, and when the winds turn away from them, they put up one person to guide the stone statues to row them into the proper direction. The food is all the same; hard bread, salted fish; some meat. Tasteless water. 

They don’t even dare to sing too loud, because such songs would not be something sung by a normal dolphin, and there’s no reason to call further attention to themselves.

Anairë laughs, sometimes, when she feels the boredom tugging at her hair like a stray dog, and wonders if the true reason for Findekáno- Fingon, in this new world, apparently- going to rescue Maitimo is because of this same emotion. Surely the Helcaraxë had been _worse-_ just cold and ice and desolation. Surely he’d have wanted some excitement. Surely Thangorodrim had provided that jolt of adrenaline and battle-joy, that Anairë can feel slowly lighting up her belly.

…

“I did wonder why you’d married him,” says Eärwen.

It’s a sunny day, and they’ve eaten breakfast, and there’s nothing to _do._ Often enough, Anairë goes inside to check the maps and stay away from the other two; she spends enough time with them on this too-small boat to drive her mad, but there’s only so much work she has to do, and that grows boring as well, quickly enough.

The other two spend most of their time sniping at each other or sparring in the confines of the deck. Anairë suspects the sniping leads to sparring and back to sniping, in a neverending cycle. Her own patience for it has just about disappeared, but Nerdanel and Eärwen have an endless love for it.

Nerdanel rolls her eyes. “I married him because I loved him.”

“Yes, well, _why?”_ Eärwen persists. “You could’ve fallen in love with anyone else! And when you were young- Nerdanel, you always wanted to be remembered for your carvings! I remember how much you wanted to escape your father’s shadow.” She waves the hand that had been holding her up, before collapsing backwards from the lack of support. Her voice comes back muffled. “And then next thing I hear, you’re marrying the mother-forsaken prince of the Noldor.”

“Don’t be unkind,” Anairë tells her primly.

“Oh, she’s said worse to me,” says Nerdanel dryly. She’s got her head tipped back, and her unbound hair’s skimming the water. “Don’t bother getting offended about it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Eärwen calls.

“I married my husband because I fell in love,” says Nerdanel again. At Eärwen’s dissatisfied noise, she sighs. “And because… I wanted someone who could match me. Who would love their craft as much as I loved mine, and not fault me for that love. I certainly didn’t think he’d fall in such love with his creations that I’d become redundant.”

“And that’s your mistake,” Anairë tells her. “It’s the problem with all Finwions, is it not? Their _passions.”_

“You say that like it’s an ugly thing,” says Eärwen, amused.

“Don’t start, Swan-Princess of the Teleri,” says Anairë. “You know what the Noldor say about _you_ lot: they’ve never loved anything so well as Elwë-”

“-they see him again and they’ll lose their minds-” puts in Nerdanel.

“-as limp as the fish they harvest-”

 _“-no,”_ says Eärwen, sitting up straight. “Who says _that?”_

“I made it up just now,” says Anairë, lips twitching. “But it sounds quite Noldo in nature, does it not?”

“You’re horrible,” says Eärwen, dropping back again.

Nerdanel shrugs, lifting her head and gathering her hair around her hand before squeezing the excess water over Eärwen’s face. “There’s only one person flopping around on deck, though,” she says innocently, when Eärwen shrieks.

“There are two of you and only one of me!”

“You should have thought of _that_ before sailing,” says Anairë, laughing. “Is it not you who keeps talking about how much of boats requires forethought and planning and-”

“-ah, _ah- enough,_ you stone-hearted peacock,” snarls Eärwen, forcing herself upright and shoving Nerdanel away. There’s water sprinkled all over her face and the top of her blouse, just light enough to make her look like she’s sweating. “Your hair’s thick enough to weave a shag carpet,” she bites out to Nerdanel before pouring some of the drinking water into her palms and splashing it on her face. Then she rounds on Anairë. “And _you-”_

“I’m innocent!” cries Anairë, holding up her hands. “What’s that saying- sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt- ah- you?”

“You say that now,” growls Eärwen. “And when the mood takes you, you know what you say? _The pen’s mightier than the sword.”_

She steps forwards, and trills out a note, and before Anairë can say anything she’s been drenched, head to toe, in a wave of water. Anairë sputters in both shock and a fair amount of pain; the salt-water’s stinging in her eyes, and she feels, suddenly, nauseous from the water that she’s swallowed, too much all at once.

“Anairë?” Eärwen steps forwards, concern overtaking the glee. “Anairë- I didn’t mean-”

In the smoothest move that Anairë’s ever managed, she digs her shoulder into Eärwen’s sternum and hauls her up and over the railing, straight into the sea.

Nerdanel gives a great shout of laughter, collapsing on the other railing with it, and Eärwen screams when she surfaces like some banshee, so high and piercing it hurts Anairë’s ears.

“If you _sleep,”_ she hollers up at Anairë, “I will drown you alive, you two-faced, conniving, traitor of a sister!”

“Yes,” says Anairë smugly, dangling the rope ladder that she’s just yanked out of the water. “But you’ll have to climb up first, won’t you?”

The water’s drying tackily on her skin, and it all itches. But this is the first time that they’ve been together, the three of them, without crowns or feuding brothers or an ancient grudge between them, and Anairë finds herself enjoying the company, far more than ever simply enduring it as she’d dreaded from the beginning. She hadn’t imagined she would, but she’s relaxing into it, and that’s worth something: if she dies- when she dies- it will not be in hated company.

…

It’s weeks later that they finally sight land- it’s Nerdanel that sees it.

“Is that-”

“Yes,” says Eärwen, quiet as the blowing wind. “Land.”

Anairë swallows hard. “Beleriand. We did it.”

“We did it,” whispers Nerdanel. She whirls around to catch Anairë’s hands. “We did it!”

Eärwen sinks back, so she’s kneeling between the railing posts but still staring out at the misty darkness that heralds land. She looks up slowly to Anairë. “Is it Mount Taras?”

“We can’t land there anyways,” says Anairë. “It’ll have to be a ways away, lest someone learn too much about us.” Then she straightens, a thought occurring to her. “And we’ll need to ensure we change the tokens, Nerdanel: from hiding from the Ainur to hiding from the Eldar. Best not to let anyone come on the ship by accident.”

“A dolphin on shore would be a strange sight indeed,” says Nerdanel, inclining her head. 

She walks away, quickly prying the tokens out of their slots to turn them onto their other side and then breathing on them. There’s no glow or shine, but Anairë’s confident enough in Nerdanel’s tokens not to ask any further questions. She turns instead to Eärwen.

“Steer us? I’ll get the maps so we can try to pinpoint where we’ve landed.”

“Good idea.” Eärwen takes the till, white hair streaming back, and frowns when she sees the coastline that Anairë’s sketched. “It’s too flat. And it’s going inland. I think we’ve turned out too north- what’s that blasted name- the Firth of Drengist?”

“We should’ve seen an island before that,” calls Nerdanel from the other side. 

“We got blown off course from that wind, though,” Anairë calls back. “You know that storm a couple days ago? We might have missed it in the rain.”

Eärwen grimaces. “I say we go south. Our vision’s good right now; the coastline’s definitively slanting inward, and at an angle that will lead us to the firth if we choose to follow it.”

“Say we follow it,” says Nerdanel, joining them. “Say we land at the firth. Is it a bad idea?”

“How we reach Angband after that is a challenge,” replies Anairë, tracing the paths. “We agreed no open plains, remember? Too much opportunity for people to track us. Or too many villages, and we’ll be too memorable.”

“Cutting south now in a boat will be faster than trying to follow the mountains south,” agrees Eärwen.

“Fine,” says Nerdanel slowly. “But we’ll have to be careful. Now- ah- what vision do you want people to see, with these Eldar tokens?”

“I don’t know- er- a shipwreck?” says Anairë

Nerdanel scoffs. “Like that’s not going to be memorable.”

“A shipwreck _would_ be memorable,” murmurs Eärwen.

“Then make it a patch of seaweed,” says Anairë, throwing up her hands. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“If I were ruling over a city,” says Nerdanel, in that voice of hers that means more trouble rather than less, “a piece of kelp about the size of a small island approaching my home would be worth investigating.”

“Well,” says Anairë flatly. “We’re all very jealous of the fact that you didn’t get a chance to be queen, Nerdanel.”

Eärwen snorts into the steering mechanism, Nerdanel’s amused mien drops into irritation, and Anairë turns back to her maps, content with having the last word.

…

Anairë steps out of the cabin and waves both Nerdanel and Eärwen over. 

“We’ll have to dye our hair,” she says. 

Nerdanel blinks. “What?”

“Dye our hair,” repeats Anairë. “There aren’t any Teleri over here, and red-haired elves are a little too rare to be quickly forgotten.”

“Dye _our_ hair,” says Nerdanel. “Are you doing anything to yours?”

“Would you have felt better if I said your hair?” retorts Anairë, tossing them the bottle of dye she’s been hiding in her packs since leaving Aman. 

“Is it really necessary?” Eärwen eyes the bottle like it’s something poisonous. “There are Sindar here, aren’t there? With similar hair to mine.”

“Not traveling around here there aren’t,” says Anairë. “And certainly not of your height either. Do you remember the beliefs about the Trees? They had an _effect_ on all of us. Made us taller, and stronger, and-”

 _“I am not,”_ says Eärwen, voice going slightly shrill, “coloring my hair because you’re worried it’ll get us _recognized.”_

“It’s either that or I burn the maps and we’re stuck on the water for the foreseeable future,” says Anairë, folding her arms. When Nerdanel makes a protesting sound, Anairë glares at her. “Believe me, I’ll do it too. I’d rather know now that you’re not taking this seriously than when we reach Angamando.”

Eärwen’s hand closes over Nerdanel’s wrist. “She’s not in the habit of making threats for the sake of making them,” she says lowly, through the side of her mouth. 

“I just think this is a bit hasty,” says Nerdanel.

“I want to have something other than dry fish for dinner tonight,” Anairë tells them both. “I want solid earth under my feet. But I also want to reach our destination, which is not Beleriand in general, yes? If you’ll remember.”

“Curse your sharp mind,” says Eärwen grumpily, and picks up the bottle. “Is this enough?”

“I’ve six other bottles in my quarters,” Anairë replies. She smiles thinly at them. “You ought to be glad that I’m not asking you to cut your hair as well.”

“Now _that,”_ says Nerdanel, grimly undoing the bindings of her hair, “would have been a price too high.”

“Too high a price to save the entire world?” asks Anairë sardonically, leaning back against the balustrade so the wind catches on her scalp.

Nerdanel flicks a drop of blackened water at Anairë. “I’m sure my sons, at least, will understand why I could not save them.”

“And there comes Nerdanel’s blasted superiority complex again,” says Eärwen, rolling her eyes. “Your sons have not proven themselves very adept at being understanding, I assure you.”

“As if you’ve raised your own children to be very tolerant,” begins Nerdanel. 

“We can be rest assured that the only people to be truly diplomatic with Finwë’s blood are Nolofinwë’s house, then,” Anairë states, just in time for both Nerdanel and Eärwen to turn and look at her like she’s mad. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Nerdanel, and Eärwen arches her eyebrows in silent agreement. 

“I’m not!” protests Anairë, but the others don’t pause to hear her out, and their hands are dark enough with the dye to turn her skin permanently bruise-blue, so Anairë falls silent as well.

…

They dock in a marshy area, letting the mists guide them into safety. Anairë’s fairly certain she’ll have to face mud up to her hip when they try to get off the boat, but she can’t quite bring herself to care; the world does not smell of salt or the sea here. It’s not an entirely pleasant smell- she thinks she’ll get over her affection for it quickly- but it’s different and _new,_ and nothing she’s ever smelled before in Aman, and she’s excited by that fact alone.

“We don’t have boots,” says Nerdanel, watching the murky waters carefully. 

“No,” agrees Anairë. “We’ll have to brave it. And hope there aren’t too many animals lurking inside.” She frowns thoughtfully. “I don’t think there will be; it’s too cold for the majority of the species that cannot regulate their body temperature, and there isn’t enough malignance about this place for me to suspect Morgoth’s influence.”

“And what of the species that _can_ regulate body temperature?”

“They don’t tend to enjoy cold marshes,” says Anairë quickly. “I mean. They’re like us, are they not? Can you imagine wanting to live here?”

Nerdanel grits her teeth, then hoists herself over the side of the boat and into the water. It’s not quite so deep as Anairë had thought; it only comes up to Nerdanel’s knees, which means it’ll come up to Anairë’s mid-thigh. 

“If we die here,” Nerdanel tells Anairë grimly, “I’m telling the Valar it’s all your damn fault.”

“I’ll corroborate,” says Eärwen cheerfully, still at the till. 

Anairë sighs and clambers down as well, grimacing at the sucking sensation of mud and green water along her legs. “I’m not dying before I get the taste of fish out of my mouth,” Anairë tells Nerdanel, and starts squelching her way to the closest tree branch that she thinks can hold her weight.

…

They get some birds- not ones that Anairë’s ever seen before, all white-tailed and black-feathered, with spearing beaks and delicate claws. Not much else; Anairë’s not surprised by that, either, because they’ve made enough noise in landing the boat that they’ve probably scared off the larger fauna.

Still, the birds make for a good meal.

...

“This won’t be fun,” says Eärwen, who hasn’t gotten into the swamp surrounding their boat for the full day that they’ve been docked.

“After you pushed me into the sea all those times?” asks Anairë mercilessly. “Don’t bother. Once we leave the marsh we’ll straighten ourselves out anyhow.”

Nerdanel’s lip curls a little; she’s the one carrying a large container of freshwater for them to scrub the mud off, and has been grumpy about it since they decided it would be her responsibility. But it also doesn’t make sense to go to Vinyamar in mud-splattered clothes, which they all know; Nerdanel’s just… being irritable.

“Sometimes I think it would be better if you both treated me as the queen I am,” Eärwen mutters under her breath.

“It’s because you’re queen that I haven’t shoved you in,” says Nerdanel sweetly. “And it’s because of my deep, underlying love for you both that I haven’t dumped the water overboard as well.”

“On that note,” says Anairë, lowering herself into the muddy water once again, “let’s go, yes?”

…

…

Eärwen keeps her mouth shut as they get closer to Vinyamar. Nerdanel, who- ostensibly- should be doing the same, does not.

“One last thing,” she says, suddenly, in too-loud Quenya.

“Nerdanel,” says Anairë impatiently.

Nerdanel ignores her. “How good are either of you at ósanwë?”

“I’m… not bad?” says Eärwen, bewildered.

Anairë grimaces. “Not great.”

“So if Turukáno-”

“ _-Turgon-”_

“-is there, in the city, he won’t know your presence?” 

“No,” says Anairë. “Not unless I’m standing in front of him. I’ve always needed eye contact or physical touch for mine to work.”

Nerdanel glances at Eärwen, who sighs. “I’m better than Anairë, but I’ll probably need more proximity than this. Why?”

“Because I’m fairly good,” says Nerdanel. “And I’ve been having to shield against my sons- not all of them, but Maitimo and Carnistir are far better at this than the average elf. If we aren’t careful, some of them might- ah- figure out our plans.”

“Even at this distance?” asks Anairë, looking flabbergasted.

Eärwen’s reminded of the sheer… _otherness_ of the Fëanorians: even Nerdanel, who’s always proven to be the least of them, still carries that indelible grandeur in her lungs and her speech. Trust Fëanáro- Fëanor- to find the single ellyth who could match him in spirit and fey-ness.

“Just- be careful,” says Nerdanel flatly, and starts trekking onwards once more.

…

They enter Vinyamar quietly. Nerdanel points out the shoemaker with a quick gesture- they’ve been working on said gestures for a while now, because neither Nerdanel nor Eärwen are fluent enough Sindarin to risk speaking in front of people who’ll find the lack of knowledge suspicious- and Anairë takes the lead to step forwards and greet the shopkeeper.

“Boots,” she says, after the pleasantries are exchanged, gesturing to the shoes they’re all three wearing with a sheepish look.

Then Anairë continues, too swift for Eärwen to follow along properly, and apparently starts bargaining. Nerdanel steps closer to Eärwen, pointing to the beaded leather bands set aside on the next shopkeeper’s stoop in a glass cage; they’re remarkably similar to the bands that Eärwen used to wear in Aman.

“They look familiar,” murmurs Nerdanel.

Eärwen steps forwards to examine them closer. The stones set into the leather isn’t as properly done as in Alqualondë; they look looser, and will probably fray the leather strips along the bottom if used on a daily basis. But it’s the stones themselves which catch Eärwen’s eye. They aren’t the pure blue that she favors; these are blue with lines of silver and green, as she’s known only one person’s eyes to be in all of Tirion. They’re the same fashion as the bands that Eärwen used while still in Aman.

The shop-owner comes up to them and starts talking rapidly, seemingly pleased with her interest. Eärwen tunes out his words- she’s never been capable of focusing on people she can’t understand- when Nerdanel’s hand closes on her wrist, so firm as to be bruising.

“Finrod?” says Nerdanel. Eärwen thinks she’s trying to sound impressed and a little flattering, but her voice just sounds constipated. “Prince Finrod?”

“Yes,” says the shopkeeper, pleased with the recognition.

Eärwen’s eyes narrow. She’s heard that name before- it’s-

Recognition floods through her, and she whirls towards Nerdanel.

 _Tries_ to turn towards her. Nerdanel’s grip on Eärwen’s wrist goes vice-tight, and she steps closer to Eärwen so her hip checks Eärwen’s own and thereby ensures that Eärwen can’t quite move at all. 

“Thank you,” says Nerdanel tightly, and draws Eärwen away, back towards Anairë.

Anairë, who’s face is such a smooth, polished mask that Eärwen knows _her_ bargaining isn’t going well either. Then Anairë smiles, and Eärwen’s blood goes cold: it’s Anairë’s _everything’s-going-so-badly-I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-this_ smile.

“Don’t,” she hisses, throwing herself back from Nerdanel.

Nerdanel pauses for barely a moment. “Why?”

“Exits,” whispers Eärwen in Quenya, praying against hope that nobody’s listening or _able_ to listen. “Where are they?”

“We entered through- probably the- west? That way?”

“Be ready to run,” says Eärwen, even as they approach Anairë. Out of the side of her mouth, she says, “Translate as much as you can?”

“They’re discussing gold,” Nerdanel mutters back, lips barely moving. Her eyes are sweeping over the entire market suddenly, studying everyone with a too-sharp gaze. “The stamps on the coins. He’s not seen them for a long time, apparently. Doesn’t think they’re real.”

“Should’ve taken old gold,” whispers Eärwen, disgusted with herself for the thoughtlessness. 

“Mmm,” says Nerdanel.

Anairë turns to look at them with a well-hidden look of desperation behind her eyes; the shopkeeper probably doesn’t see anything. “Sister,” she says, in a strange accent. “Did you get what you wanted?” Eärwen shrugs, making a complicated face at her so the shopkeeper backs off a little, and Anairë sighs, turning back to him. Her words are swift and gestures slowly becoming more irritated, until she finally snaps something loud enough for the street to go a little quieter.

“Go,” Eärwen tells Nerdanel, running a hand over some whetting stones as she does so. _“Now.”_

Nerdanel doesn’t hesitate, turning on her heel and disappearing into the crowd. Eärwen pauses to let herself calm, to let her muscles loosen from the tense curl of immediate fear into a more sedate watchfulness. Then she steps back, once, twice, thrice, into the safety of a shadowed eave, and hums a tune gentle enough to pull the shadows around her. People looking for her will have to look a little harder now, though it still won’t be impossible. But anything stronger will likely draw even worse attention if Eärwen isn’t careful, and she doesn’t quite trust in her calm to do it now-

Anairë’s face is flushed; she says something more, loudly, and then grabs the boots instead of the gold, and stalks away. 

_Head to the north exit,_ Eärwen tells her, holding to the ósanwë with grim strength. It’s not easy, and reaching Anairë is not any easier, but there’s a reason why Eärwen’s positioned herself to keep Anairë in eyesight. To _her_ credit, Anairë doesn’t do anything more than falter briefly before cutting north. _I’ll meet you there._

_Nerdanel?_

_Will meet us at the ship._

Eärwen cuts through the market swiftly, keeping her head down. Her breaths come quick and short, and she flexes her fingers in the privacy of her sleeves, straining to keep from palming her knives.

Anairë reaches the exit before Eärwen; she’d taken a far more obvious route. Eärwen doesn’t bother speaking, instead touching her shoulder and slipping into the crowd.

“Good call on the hair,” she tells her lowly. “We’d have been identified on sight otherwise, I think.”

“You don’t think you’re being a bit too paranoid?” asks Anairë.

“Findaráto’s in Vinyamar,” says Eärwen harshly, and Anairë pales. “He’d asked the leatherworker next to the shoemaker to send up some bands for his hair. If that shoemaker has any contacts in the castle…”

“I take your point,” says Anairë. Then, as they finally make their way out of the underbrush. “Was it difficult?” At Eärwen’s blank look, she elaborates, “To think that Findaráto’s so close, and you’re not able to see him?”

Eärwen pokes at the feelings in her chest, trying to understand them better. This is why she’s always enjoyed the time _away_ from Arafinwë, after an argument; she needs the time and the space and the calm of solitude to tease out everything she’s actually feeling. In this mad mess of their mission, they don’t have that luxury.

“Yes,” she says plainly. “But I know why we’re doing this, and I know that if I succeed in this, I’ll have years in which to speak to him. I’m not so weak-willed as to forget that at the first thought of his presence, Anairë.”

“Not weak-willed!” protests Anairë. “Only love, yes? And the reason why we’re doing _all_ of this- it’s for love. How could I blame you for wanting it when I had to tell myself sternly no less than seven times this morning to not go looking for Turukáno?”

“Seven times?” asks Eärwen.

Anairë huffs a breathless laugh, struggling up the last hill, and nods. “Not to ask after him, and not to speak of him, and- oh, all kinds of things. His _wife_ died, Eärwen; I’m so worried for him.”

“You’ve always worried overmuch.”

“And you’ve always worried undermuch,” retorts Anairë. “No, no, I know that you’d rather they learn from their mistakes, rather than be sheltered from the consequences. And I’d normally agree with you, but this is not- normal. And these consequences are not anything less than death.”

“Yes,” says Eärwen, and the words come out weary. “I’m aware of that. Believe it or not.”

Anairë’s face softens a little. “I don’t mean to preach.”

“You do mean to preach,” Eärwen tells her. “You’ve never meant _not_ to preach.”

“I am not that bad!”

Eärwen closes her eyes. _I’m so tired,_ she thinks, before swallowing the thought. She doesn’t get to be tired here, when she chose this. She opens her eyes and pushes through a thicket of briars carefully, so they don’t tear at her clothes.

“When you were queen,” she says, pitching her voice to sound curious, “is it true that King Nolofinwë had to mandate that only the steward could designate who could speak during a council session?”

Anairë flushes a bright red. A brighter red, Eärwen corrects herself, because she’s already sweating from the minimal exertion. “No!”

“Findis mentioned that he wanted someone to construct proper runes on his table,” continues Eärwen. “To ensure that his decision was followed. And _Lalwen_ told me that it was because of you.”

“Well, she was lying!”

“No, she wasn’t,” says Eärwen, before grinning at Anairë. Her lungs are aching and her calves are scraped half-raw, but she feels something thawing in her chest, like ice broken up after a long winter to allow the boats to sail once more. “But you are now.”

…

They head east two days later, laying as many security provisions on the boat as they dare and carrying as much weaponry as they can. 

Nerdanel, whose face looks washed-out under the cap of dark hair she has now, is fairly vibrating with the tension. Anairë looks calmer, but Eärwen knows her well enough to know the storm roiling beneath the mask. Eärwen herself feels- relief, more than anything, now that things are finally moving.

Their path from here onwards will only become more difficult and more treacherous. But Eärwen has her knives and her common sense, and the strength of a hundred years’ preparation steady at her back. She’ll trust in that. She’ll put her trust in that, if she cannot trust Anairë or Nerdanel, and she’s learning that she _can_ trust them: to be unshaking, to be ruthless, to be fierce and steady and _strong,_ at the end of it all.

It won’t be easy: the path will be high and hard and cold and lonely. 

But Eärwen is strong, and she will not let herself falter until she’s won what needs to be won, because what she’s planning to win is nothing less than the fate of the world.


	3. sleep for today, but tomorrow we fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nerdanel reaches out, and wraps an arm around his, where there is no hand any longer. _I love you so deeply,_ she whispers, _it feels like my heart will turn to stone from the weight of it. Believe me, Maitimo: everything I’ve done is for you, and for your brothers. Everything is for the love I bear you._
> 
>  _And what,_ he asks, _is everything?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not how ósanwë works, but it's how it works in this universe, yes?

The first time orcs attack them, Nerdanel guts seven of them.

They’re in the middle of the mountains, and the orcs drop down from the cliffs, and it’s all very confusing and very bloody. Nerdanel realizes very quickly to aim for their stomachs; she’s strong enough to bite through the armor, and not precise enough to really get the limbs if she isn’t paying attention, and she _can’t_ pay attention in a melee like this.

They survive without any major injuries- beginner’s luck, Nerdanel suspects, because she’s made her way through more than her fair share of the orcs. Anairë had frozen up for a good period of time, and Eärwen had thrown her knives too quickly to be of much use later in the skirmish. And now, they’re both sitting at the riverbank nearby, trying to scrub off the orc blood. 

Eärwen is white-faced and silent as she scrubs her hands. Anairë’s crying, or so Nerdanel thinks; she’s trembling hard enough for it to be unclear. And then there’s Nerdanel, whose hands are not shaking, whose mind only feels clear and clean, like someone’s swept all the extraneous bits and bobbles away to reveal only smooth stone. 

She wipes down her blade, and sticks her hands in the stream so they run clean. Her face is definitely stained blood-black.

Speaking of…

“Do you think orc blood will make for a good dye?”

Eärwen freezes at Nerdanel’s question, and Anairë chokes hard, as if Nerdanel’s said something sacrilegious. Nerdanel arches an eyebrow back.

She lasts for a minute.

Then- “Oh, you should see your _faces,”_ she says. Eärwen hisses something wordless and threatening under her breath, and Anairë buries her face in her palms, but they both look far less pale than just a moment earlier. She can’t resist the urge to keep the joke going. “Tell me, Anairë, how much dye do we have left?”

“Enough,” says Eärwen firmly. “And even if there isn’t, I’m _not_ going to harvest it.”

“That’s fine,” Nerdanel tells her cheerfully. “I’ll harvest it. You just need to, ah, apply it.”

“You’re insane,” says Eärwen.

“As, my queen,” drawls Nerdanel, “are you.”

She gets to her feet, and helps Eärwen to hers. Before she can help Anairë, she’s also on her feet, though she still looks a little faint. 

They strap their weapons up, check food stores, and continue walking east.

…

“It was easy,” says Eärwen quietly, that night.

“Yes,” says Nerdanel, who’s on watch and thought herself to be the only one awake.

“Do you think it was that easy at Alqualondë?”

For a long moment, Nerdanel doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know how she can. “No,” she says finally. “I think it’s more difficult to kill elves.”

“Or do you hope it’s more difficult?” Eärwen’s voice is soft, because it’s always soft, even in the height of her temper. “Is that what lets you sleep at night, Nerdanel, this- this- _belief,_ that your children found it more difficult to kill people they had once lived with and loved than the black-blooded orcs?”

Nerdanel swallows her first, second and third answer. “To be fair,” she says, “I don’t sleep much, nowadays.”

_“Nerdanel.”_

“I do not know.” She stares into the embers of the fire. “That is the truthful answer: you are right, I hope it is more difficult. I think it might have been. Surely turning your blade on one who looks like you- who could have been a sister, or a brother- surely that would be more difficult. But I do not _know._ As you do not know.”

Eärwen makes a sound that Nerdanel doesn’t understand: low and snaking and hurt. “I was there in Alqualondë when it happened,” she whispers, and Nerdanel goes still. “My father could not go to see what had happened in the morning. Already he was hurt by Finwë’s death, and hurt further by Fëanáro’s accusations; my brothers were dead, and my mother was caring for my father, and there was only me. So I went.”

She bites back the instinctive desire to get angry at the mention of her husband’s name, instead tipping her head back to look up at the stars. Here, this far from Aman, they are different; they rise earlier, and there are constellations that Nerdanel’s seen before in their glory.

“I picked up my people’s bodies,” says Eärwen quietly. “Not just Teleri. Noldor as well. I picked them up and I burned them, and I thought my hands would never wash clean.” She sits up, in front of the fire, so all Nerdanel can see of her is her dark silhouette. “When you decided to make your sculpture a set of cupped hands, over the full dock of Alqualondë- I felt like you’d taken the nightmare from my mind and transformed it to something shining and good.”

 _And then I tainted it,_ thinks Nerdanel.

But the admission is true, and fair, though Nerdanel would never have accepted it had Eärwen come and accused her to her face. 

“I’m sorry,” says Nerdanel, so quiet as to be a whisper. 

“I- what?”

“I’m sorry.” Nerdanel tightens her grip on her sword, useless, palms aching. “I didn’t mean- well, I didn’t mean for you to think that. I _did_ mean it as a kindness: for the Teleri, for those of us left behind. A set of hands, holding us together in the place where it all fell apart.” She inhales slowly. “I didn’t mean for its worth to be lessened in your eyes.”

“So you really did separate it in your mind.”

“Of course! It was- two purposes in one. A boat to leave Alqualondë, and one last statement within Aman.” Nerdanel hesitates for a moment, but she’s come this far. What’s a little further? “My husband and my sons caused that to happen. Caused the blood spilled on Alqualondë’s beaches. To you those hands were your own, Eärwen; to me, they are mine: hands which have worked and worked, trying to fix what they have broken. That statue is the reason why I’m here. Because there is only one way to fix it, to truly fix it all.”

Eärwen stretches out a hand, and catches Nerdanel’s forearm; she skims her palm down until she’s covering Nerdanel’s own, both of them clutching the hilt of Nerdanel’s sword. 

“I miss them,” she breathes. “I miss them all, more than I can ever say. And that’s why I’m here, yes? To keep them safe. To keep them alive.”

Nerdanel’s hand, almost against her will, turns, so she’s not touching the sword but rather Eärwen’s skin. Her throat aches, a little, like she’s sang too much for it to bear. 

“When Maitimo was captured-” Nerdanel shudders, in and out, and then drags her gaze away, to the outside of the camp. She’s on watch, and she must remain watchful until her watch is ended. “-I could feel his pain. It was so all-encompassing. I knew that something terrible had happened to either him or Carnistir; I knew I had to do _something.”_

“Oh, Nerdanel,” says Eärwen softly.

“I- do you remember what we do to little babes, when they’ve bruised themselves and must be calmed to apply lotions?”

“We protect them,” says Eärwen. “We- ah- cover their fëa in our own. Take their pain on ourselves.”

“Yes.” Nerdanel lifts a hand, and pushes a strand of hair away from her eyes, and doesn’t stop glaring into the darkness. “Yes. That’s what I did for my son.”

Eärwen chokes. _“What?_ How? _How?”_

“I told you I was good at ósanwë.”

“Not _this_ good!”

“It exhausted me as you wouldn’t believe. I could do it so very rarely.” 

_Too rare._ And damn Fëanáro for this, too: he should have protected their son when Nerdanel could not. He’d been so much closer to Angband; if he’d only _lived-_

“That you could at all is more than any other,” says Eärwen gently.

“More than any other, perhaps,” says Nerdanel heavily. “And not enough. Not near enough.” 

She huffs out a breath, slow as molasses. 

Not enough: write _that_ on Nerdanel’s tombstone. Not enough to outshine her father, not enough to keep Fëanáro reasonable, not enough to keep her family together, not enough to do anything but watch as it all crumbles into ash and dust at her feet. 

Not enough.

If she dies before they steal the Silmarils, if she dies as they’re stealing the Silmarils- there won’t be a tombstone for Nerdanel. There will not even be the memory of dust. There will only be the knowledge in Nerdanel’s own fëa, of her failure, again, here at the end of all things.

(Once, she’d had ambition in her veins, running as thick as blood. Nerdanel had put it aside for long years, for her husband, for her family, for her own peace of mind. Sitting near a fire, in an unfamiliar land, sword in her palm and enemy almost in sight: she remembers it again.

Not ambition to thrive, nor ambition to shine, nor ambition to succeed.

Just: to _survive.)_

“We’ll be in Angband soon,” says Eärwen quietly, like a whisper of a wind darting across the plains. Her hand is warm in Nerdanel’s own. “Very soon.”

“We’re making good time,” agrees Nerdanel.

…

The sun rises on them, cold and golden, their breaths glimmering puffs of frost in the air. The sun rises on them, revealing two women tangled together, eyes watchful and faces frozen over. The sun rises on them, and Nerdanel rises with it, and lets her muscles warm with movement even as her bones go ever colder, ever colder, ever colder.

…

They pass the Fen of Serech, and then enter well into Anfauglith; they keep rotating the songs of silence and the person singing them, so none can track them and- even if they come that far- they cannot find them. 

Then Anfauglith gives way to the broken steppes and stones of Ered Engrin, and Nerdanel _feels_ her blood boil in her veins, thinking of her darling son being dragged across the rough lands. 

...

(“One and two and three,” murmurs Anairë, a mouthful of sharp splinters. 

Her eyes are glowing from within, as they have been ever since they left the relative safety of Dorthonion- as if the danger has pared away her reason, and the battle-joy has cut away the limitations of her flesh. For the first time, Nerdanel can believe that something of Anairë lives in the son that saved Maitimo.

“The valley,” says Eärwen. She does not smile, but her gaze is like diamond scraping on ice. “Not long now.”

“Not long enough,” says Nerdanel. Her teeth are bared, and she does not remember baring them, but she does not mind the fierce, hot burst of feeling rising from her chest, so hot that she thinks her teeth will melt from it. “Not near long enough.”)

…

They settle in the hollow of the mountain, and Nerdanel sets up multiple tokens at the entrance, of hiding, of unimportance, of flowing wind and inhospitable darknesses. It is cold this far north, and their clothes are not made for it, not truly. The scarce furs that they’ve managed to scavenge from their hunts are enough to keep them from freezing, but not to keep them warm.

They’ve spent the past weeks finishing their preparations. It isn’t easy; it isn’t for the faint of heart, walking through Angband, protected only by a scarce token and their own unimportance before the might of Morgoth. They are set to challenge him soon enough: the longer they spend delaying, the more they believe in that failure, and therefore the higher the odds of their failure.

But still she cannot bring herself to speak. Seeding the battlefield is necessary. Seeding it twice-over is caution. Seeding it thrice-over is just plain common sense before an enemy of Morgoth’s strength. Surely…

“Tomorrow,” says Anairë, and all Nerdanel’s justifications shatter as so much marble before a hammer.

“Tomorrow,” agrees Eärwen.

Nerdanel closes her eyes, and opens them, and breathes out. “Tomorrow,” she says, and sits up.

“We can do it,” says Anairë, and means it as reassurance.

“Yes,” says Nerdanel levelly. “But if we _shall-_ that remains to be seen. And I am… afraid. I find myself afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of dying in silence and solitude,” she says. “Of dying, and none knowing where and how I die, when I’m dying for them.”

“We swore not to contact them,” says Anairë slowly.

“Because we did not wish to give them the chance to stop us.” Nerdanel spreads her arms wide. “We assault the fortress tomorrow morning, yes? There will not be any such chance.”

“Even if we decide to do it, how can we?”

Eärwen straightens suddenly. “Oh,” she breathes.

Nerdanel nods to her. “Yes.”

“Nerdanel’s quite… good at ósanwë,” Eärwen tells Anairë carefully. “Very good. She might be able to connect us.”

“Without _him_ noticing?” says Anairë.

“There is a chance,” agrees Nerdanel. “There is a chance with everything that we have done: that we will falter in our song, or we will falter in our steps, or falter in our strength. There is a chance that a broken bond can have a repercussion that he can feel, but not much of one. Certainly not as much as we risked by stepping out into the valley.”

“I,” says Anairë, and blinks, her great silver eyes sliding in and out of view. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Anairë,” says Eärwen, laughing a little, “has _any_ of this been a good idea?”

“Oh,” she whispers, curling inwards. Then she lifts her gaze to Nerdanel’s, and Nerdanel can see the desire in them, like the ocean, deep and unknowable and ever-present. “Very well then. Whom do you wish to tell?”

Nerdanel pauses, thinking about it, and then says, “We each choose one.”

“You’re strong enough for that?” asks Eärwen.

“I’ll need to borrow your strength,” says Nerdanel. “And perhaps some of Anairë’s control. But I have the skill and the ability. It will be simple; just put your hands in mine. Open your minds to me. Choose someone you’d normally have a bond with: a child, or a husband. It must be a strong bond. And the nearer they are to us, the better it will be.” She pauses, and decides to give the warning. “There shall be no privacy, not between the three of us. Anairë, have you decided?”

A flicker of a smile passes over Anairë’s face, and she puts her cold hand in Nerdanel’s. “Nolofinwë,” she says.

Eärwen’s hand closes over Nerdanel’s other before she can reach for it, and Nerdanel sees the two of them close the circle opposite her. 

Nerdanel breathes in, and breathes out, and breathes in, and breathes out. Then she extends her senses, reaching with the arm-that-is-not-an-arm, and tangling her fingers in the threads of Anairë’s bonds. It takes her a moment to recognize which is Nolofinwë: the bond that sings like the dancing air, ever-whirling and ever-changing; lovely and unstill and as lofty as the mountains on which the strongest winds howl. 

_Nolofinwë,_ she says, and uses her own power to pull the bond taut between them, to hollow it out and allow Anairë to speak through it. _Nolofinwë, hear me!_

A voice- deep and sonorous and furious- resounds through the bond. _Who is this!_ Nerdanel drops away immediately. Anairë, however, does not speak immediately. Nolofinwë does, even angrier: _I tell you, if this is some trick of-_

 _Nolofinwë,_ says Anairë, in a voice so rich with grief that it silences them all. _Oh, my husband. It has been so long._

 _Anairë? I- I don’t understand._ Nolofinwë pauses for a moment, then starts to get angry again. _If this is a trick-_

_No trick, love. Just me._

_I don’t_ understand. _How is this possible?_

 _Thank Nerdanel,_ says Anairë, and the grief cracks away, so she sounds halfway to amused. _She allowed me to do this._

_Oh. I did not know she could._

_Neither did I, or I would have asked it of her sooner._

For a moment, he does not say anything. Then: _I am so sorry._

 _Leave aside your apologies,_ says Anairë softly. _We have both done so many things. Oh, Nolofinwë, I must ask your forgiveness, and now I do understand what a bitter pill it can be to swallow!_

 _What could you possible have to apologize for?_ asks Nolofinwë, bewildered.

_I will tell you in a minute. But before that: remember that I love you, yes? And tell our children that. All of them. I love them so very, very much. I love all of you more than anything else in the world. More than anything else that Eru has ever gifted us._

_Anairë-_

_Tell me you love me._

_Of course I love you! I don’t-_

_Promise me that you’ll love me until the end of time,_ says Anairë, and Nerdanel can see the fear in her now: the fear, and the courage stoked high by the fear, and not diminished by it. _Promise me that you’ll remember me, my love._

 _I don’t- yes, of course, of_ course, _what are you even-_

_I am not in Aman._

Nolofinwë falls silent immediately. _Where are you?_

_I am in Beleriand._

_Tell me where you are!_ There is joy rising in Nolofinwë, like a rising tide. Like a surging wave. _I will be there, Anairë, I will- oh, I don’t even know how you- but you_ would, _you would, you’re more brilliant than-_

 _Nolofinwë,_ says Anairë, and even her mental voice sounds like it’s scraped glass, and he falls silent. _You cannot meet me._

_Of course I-_

_I am in Angamando._

A surging wave must crash to sand somewhere, and it does now, in a grand fall of shock. _Why?_

 _To save us,_ says Anairë. 

_You will die!_ And here is the terror, as diamond-sharp frothing foam. Nerdanel buries her pity deep within the darkest recesses of her mind. _You will die, and there will be nothing but- nothing but-_

 _-memory,_ finishes Anairë. _The only gift that Eru ever promised us. Is that not what Írissë said to me when you left? Is that not what Fëanáro said to us all, when he left?_

 _No,_ says Nolofinwë. _No,_ no, _this is not- I did not think you so- reckless! Not ever! What shall you accomplish? What can you hope to accomplish?_

 _You will not turn me from my path,_ says Anairë gently. _As you walked your path, Nolo, I have walked my own. You chose your destiny for grief and for love and for pride, too; I chose mine for grief and for love and for rage. Our son is dead, and you were not there beside me to mourn that. Arakáno is dead, and I will do everything I can to ensure no other of my children follow him into Mandos’ halls. I will do everything to ensure you cannot follow him into death._

_Anairë!_

_You cannot stop me, Nolo._

He stays silent for a long time, and then he says, _Please do not do this._

 _I must,_ says Anairë. She presses forwards, through the bond, so her fëa presses against Nolofinwë’s own, gentle as a forehead clasp. _I love you. I must go, now. I love you. Remember that. Tell our children to remember that, if I never get the chance to tell you again._

 _Anairë,_ he whispers, and she pulls away, until there is only the faintest thread of their bond remaining. 

_Tell me you love me,_ she commands once more.

This time, Nolofinwë is the one who opens the bond again: he floods it with memories of Anairë, of the chill in his hands without her beside him on the Helcaraxë, of the doubt in his decisions upon being crowned, of the loneliness and the grief and the loss and the shining, glimmering thread of love singing through all those long years of separation.

 _Of course I do,_ he says hoarsely.

Anairë makes a sound, high and piercing and cracked through, and wrenches her hand from Nerdanel’s, breaking the connection cleanly. For a moment, Nerdanel can see nothing but bright spots in her vision; then it resolves to see Anairë’s face, shattered with grief and the sting and weft of old scars being cut open once more.

None of them move for a long time. Finally, slowly, Anairë looks up from her hands, and reaches out, and grips Nerdanel’s wrist. “Whose turn is it?”

Eärwen swallows when Nerdanel turns to look at her. “I don’t think-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Anairë sharply. “I won’t be the only one to speak to my family. Not after relying on your strength and Nerdanel’s ability to do it in the first place. Now. Eärwen: who?”

“Angaráto,” Eärwen says finally, and her face looks luminous in the faint reflection of the stars off of the ice. “He’s close enough to us, and a fair hand with ósanwë besides.”

Eärwen’s mind is stranger to Nerdanel than Anairë’s; made of cool, swirling depths and a thousand-thousand locked rooms that glimmer as the sea underneath a twilight sky. Where Anairë shines like ice and clean stone, Eärwen is darker and dimmer and cooler, never as bright and never as cruel.

She’s already picked out Angaráto’s bond. It threads through the outermost layer of her thoughts like a braided vine of ice and water and kelp, and the ice shines the same shade as her hair, as Angaráto’s hair.

Nerdanel widens it, hollows it, and lets another portion of her energy pull it taut, bring it into focus. _Angaráto,_ she says, through the bond, to call his attention.

It’s when he answers that she drops away.

 _Angaráto,_ says Eärwen warmly. _My son. Oh, it has been such a long time._

_Mother?_

_Who else?_

_I- how is this possible?_

_Someone once told me that all is possible, if only we work hard enough._ Eärwen makes a sound, choked-off, like she wants to laugh but can only strangle it in her throat. _Let us call it… audacity, Ango, and love and hope as well. All mixed together. I love you so much._

 _None of us knew it was possible to contact people from across the sea._ He pauses, but Eärwen doesn’t interrupt him. _Tell me, how is everyone? Father, and Grandfather, and-_

 _They are fine,_ says Eärwen quietly. _They all love you as well. But I am not in Aman, my darling. I am in Beleriand._

Disbelief comes through the bond, like a slow-rising wave. _How? When? Why?_

Images of Alqualondë: blood on white sand. Spires of ice, and a cold biting into his very bones. Angaráto is powerful in the art of ósanwë but not skilled; he cannot control the visions accompanying his thoughts, and the shock of Eärwen’s admission is accompanied by all the reasons he thinks she’d never accompany them to Beleriand.

 _For many reasons._ Eärwen hesitates briefly. _I cannot explain them all now. All I can say is that I love you, Angaráto, and I am your mother: is it not a mother’s duty to be a shield and a sword to her children?_

 _We killed your people,_ he whispers.

 _Our people,_ says Eärwen firmly. _Our people. Do not pretend that we are separate now. Your sins have not changed your inheritance._

_Mother!_

_I love you,_ says Eärwen. _I will always love you, and all your brothers and your sister. Listen to me, Ango. There are things that you must tell all of them: tell Aikanáro that not a day passed when I did not remember his laughter in Aman; and tell Artanis that as much as I disagreed with her decision to leave, I admired her courage in the doing; and tell Artaresto not to shoulder the blame of things he is not responsible for; and tell Findaráto-_ she inhales slowly, _-tell him that it was the memory of his love for Turukáno that gave me strength enough to leave Aman. Tell him that it was the memory of his love for your cousins and for your uncle that reminded me, too, of the debts and bonds of family._

 _Mother,_ whispers Angaráto. _Mother, please, where- what-_

 _I am in Angamando,_ says Eärwen. _I am in Angamando, and we- Anairë, Nerdanel, and I- are planning to steal the Silmarils, and it is not going to be easy, and we might well not live to see tomorrow’s twilight._

She laughs, high and nervous, and then grips the bond tight. _I have to go soon, Ango, but before I do: I wish to tell you, my dear, dear boy: I love you so much. I love you all so, so much. And you are the warmest of all your siblings. The others will forget laughter if the world goes dark enough._

 _And you think I won’t?_ he demands. _Mother! This is-_

 _-you will not,_ Eärwen tells him. _You will laugh in the face of death, and you will meet it with a smile when it comes, and you, my dearest of hearts, you must remind them all, yes? If we fail- if you never see me again- you must promise me, that you shall remind your brothers and your sister of the brightness of the stars, and the goodness of the world, and the warmth of our family, even if it seems like there is none left to us._

Angaráto doesn’t reply immediately. In the end, all he says is, _They are far stronger than you think them, Mother._

 _Perhaps,_ replies Eärwen. _Perhaps. But soothe your mother’s old soul, will you, my darling boy?_

 _I would not hide this from them even if you asked,_ says Angaráto. _Please, Mother, be safe- be- I-_ we- _would give so much to-_

 _I love you,_ says Eärwen, with sudden, flaming ferocity. _I love you all so much. Remember that, Ango. Tell them as well. I love you._

She lifts her hand deliberately from Nerdanel’s to cut off the bond, and it’s so quick and clean and painless that Nerdanel blinks, startled. 

“Well,” says Eärwen, pressing the back of her palm to her face, and closing her eyes briefly before turning her gaze to Nerdanel. “Do you know who you’ll speak to?”

Nerdanel bites her lip, considering. Her first choice would be Carnistir- he’s skilled at ósanwë in a manner none of her other children are- but he’s also quite far, and she knows how he hates being accused of being her favorite. Her second choice would be the Ambarussa, or perhaps even Tyelkormo; none of them are _practiced_ at ósanwë, but they are the kind that will pass the message on quickest. Makalaurë and Curufinwë would be good choices as well if not for the fact that they’ve got less ability in ósanwë than Anairë. 

And then there is Maitimo.

Maitimo, who was held in Angband for long, long years; Maitimo, who hung from Thangorodrim for even longer; Maitimo, who spurred Nerdanel on this journey.

“Maitimo,” she whispers. 

It is the worst possible decision she could have made. It is the most hurtful, certainly, forcing him to tell his brothers, forcing this last burden on his shoulders. It is also, Nerdanel suspects, the most dangerous.

But she wed Fëanáro the fell and fey, and she loved him truly, with a love sharp and bright as a knife, and Nerdanel has never shrunk from doing what needs to be done.

“Maitimo,” she repeats, and lets Eärwen’s hand fall back against her own palm, and reaches for the bond thrumming beneath her skin.

Nerdanel does not need to do anything more than unblock the bond. If Anairë’s bond to Nolofinwë had been a thread and Eärwen’s to Angaráto a chain, this is a tunnel, deepened and hewn by Nerdanel’s desperation when Maitimo was captured. Nerdanel had blocked it off with stiff, high bricks, stacked high and double, triple, quadruple-layered, when she landed in Beleriand.

Now she lets the bricks fade away in her mind’s eye, stone turned to so much mist, and swoops through the bond to call Maitimo’s attention.

_Mother?_

_Maitimo,_ says Nerdanel. She breathes, though she does not need it in this mental landscape. Oh, how this reunion hurts! _Maitimo._

_Am I dreaming?_

_It is night,_ Nerdanel tells him gently. _The stars are high, and the wind is cold. It would be kinder to let you believe this to be a dream._

He swallows. _But it is not._

_I love you. You know this, yes?_

_Even after you abandoned us?_ he asks dryly. _Ah, I don’t need these kind of lies from my memory of my mother!_

 _If only I was a memory,_ says Nerdanel, and cannot help the smile, and cannot help the tears either. _If only it is that simple. Do you tell me that you don’t understand complications? You, who gave up all that you could, to ensure peace between our people?_

_I understand complication. I also understand hate._

Hate! As if Nerdanel could ever hate him!

 _It’s good to see that you’re nowhere near to having children,_ Nerdanel tells him, _for you surely don’t understand the least bit about being a parent yet._

Maitimo makes a strange noise, and- Nerdanel thinks- sits straight up in bed. So it takes her teasing him for her son to believe her to be herself, and not a figment of his imagination. It twinges a portion of Nerdanel’s heart; their departure had not been a kind one, and she’d said such things to all of them- Maitimo most of all- and Nerdanel doesn’t know what things he’s imagined of her over this long separation. 

If he’d believed her capable of hatred...

_Mother?_

_Well,_ says Nerdanel, and chooses to be amused. _It is good to speak to you again, my son._

 _You- you-_ how _are you-_ he breaks off incoherently, then says, sharp as a honed knife, _Are you in Beleriand?_

_You always were quite sharp._

_Why?_

Not how, Nerdanel notes, with quiet pride. As if the how matters now. If nothing else, she’s trained her son to ask the right questions.

 _Because I spent thirty years watching you hurt,_ Nerdanel says gently. _Do you think I could sit quietly and let it happen? Ai, Maitimo, it seems that you’ve inherited your father’s penchant for underestimating all those he dislikes!_

_I don’t… dislike you._

_No?_

_No,_ he says firmly. _But- where are you? Are you planning to come to Himring?_

 _Perhaps,_ says Nerdanel, and lets her laughter rise up their bond like a star-studded wind. _I’ve some things to finish first. But if there’s time afterwards- I think I’d like nothing more than to see your home, and Makalaurë’s horses, and Carnistir’s lake, and Tyelkormo’s and Curufinwë’s fortress, and the Ambarussa’s hunting lands._

 _You’ve done your homework,_ says Maitimo slowly.

Nerdanel reaches out, and wraps an arm around his, where there is no hand any longer. _I love you so deeply,_ she whispers, _it feels like my heart will turn to stone from the weight of it. Believe me, Maitimo: everything I’ve done is for you, and for your brothers. Everything is for the love I bear you._

 _And what,_ he asks, _is everything?_

Nerdanel casts her mind back to a century of planning, and pulls out the most important memories with a quick, deft hand, letting Maitimo see them all. 

_No,_ he says, when he’s done.

_No?_

_No._

It is said implacably, and with all the surety of a granite stone rolling downhill. 

_You cannot stop me,_ says Nerdanel, still gentle.

She feels the explosion of his rage like a firestorm, so hot she thinks it scrapes off the first layer of skin on her face. Anairë flinches, hard, and Eärwen almost shrieks, but Nerdanel only grits her teeth and bears through it.

 _I will not let you,_ says Maitimo, through the same gritted teeth.

_Maitimo._

_Do not make me stop you,_ he says, and it would sound like a plea in any other mouth, but not this one, not her beautiful son’s; in his it only sounds angry and angrier, and fierce as ever Fëanáro had been in the height of his glory. _Do not make me do something I will regret._

Oh, but everyone always forgets about Nerdanel’s own temper.

 _Do you remember my amilessë, Maitimo?_ asks Nerdanel. She does not wait for his answer. _My father named me for what he wished of me, and I wished it as well for such long years. But my mother named me for what she saw in my future, and it is what I am, deeper ever than my choices. Maitimo, my Maitimo: do you have it in you to stop an_ aparuivë?

For a moment there is no answer.

Then Nerdanel feels his fëa reach up, through her own, and seize the motion of her limbs from her. Another moment and he will reach her mind, and he will reach her face, and he will control her, as only one who has such a deep connection as the two of them have can manage.

Nerdanel wishes she were surprised, but she’s not: there had been a reason why Maitimo had been the last of the sons that Nerdanel wanted to call upon. His ruthlessness is borne not only of Fëanáro’s determination but also Nerdanel’s love, like a mirror reflecting on itself a hundred-thousand-thousand times over, concentrated into a beam sharp enough to cleave stone.

If Nerdanel had only her own strength, he could have managed it.

But Nerdanel is not alone, is she? 

She uses Anairë as a shield, and lets the first blow from her mind to his shock him into stillness, and then uses Eärwen as a barrier while she builds the barrier once again, blocking her from her son.

 _No,_ he says, and she gets the glimpse of stone, shocking-cold against bare feet, and then orders, rapped out in a clipped, short voice. _No, no- do not_ dare- _I will not-_

 _You tried,_ Nerdanel says, and lets her anger go, so only the ashes, so only the blooms of her love remain. She knows Maitimo feels it as well; he sags, briefly, before stalking forwards towards the stables. _You tried, my love._

 _I will not lose you to madness,_ he whispers. 

_Oh, Maitimo._ She imagines brushing his hair from his face, or cupping it in her hands. Nerdanel imagines everything she will give up, if she can just do that, once, before she dies. _You will never lose me to that._

_Is this not madness?_

_This is love,_ she tells him, and accepts the burden of his weight, of his grief, for a long, heartrending moment. _That is all it has ever been._

 _I,_ he says. _Mother. Please._ Please. _Do not-_

 _Tell your brothers I love them._ Nerdanel pauses, then, deliberately, laughs. _Do not tell them that I did this for them._

 _It will break their hearts,_ he agrees heavily.

 _It will inflate their brains,_ says Nerdanel tartly. _And Eru only knows how large they’ve gotten without anyone to keep them under control._

Mother, says Maitimo, exasperated, and Nerdanel laughs once more.

 _I love you, my boy,_ she tells him, and lets him feel the force of that love: hot as Fëanáro’s own spirit, but wilder, but brighter, shining so that he will never be able to forget it. _I will always love you. Goodbye, Maitimo._

She lifts her hand from Eärwen’s and Anairë’s, and collapses backwards, so her head thumps against the stone wall hard enough to hurt. Her heart feels so heavy, heavier than the entire sculpture she’d built at Alqualondë, and so light as well, lighter than the thinnest feather and the light running through its spokes. When she sits up again, the tears are frozen on her cheeks, and she is smiling, and it must be frightening; Anairë looks pale. Eärwen is even whiter.

Nerdanel can taste blood in the back of her throat.

“That’s that, then,” she says. “Maitimo is on his way here; we’ll _have_ to move tomorrow morning. I suppose we ought to sleep now.”

…

(Aparuivë: _inferno. Conflagaration. Firestorm. Unending, uncontrolled flame._

Here is the best lie that Nerdanel has ever told: she is any tamer than Fëanáro.)

…

“Did he just-”

“Yes.”

“Did she just-”

“Yes.”

“It’s madness. They’re _all mad.”_

“I mean,” says Anairë. “Yes?”

“Eru,” breathes Eärwen. “Am I glad they’re on our side. All nine of them.”

Nerdanel, face turned away from the other two, smiles, and lets sleep drag her deeper into its arms.

…

…

The next morning, they wake silently and move amongst each other quietly. Anairë’s limbs feel quivery, like muscle pushed a little too far too quickly.

“Pray, if you wish to,” says Nerdanel, right before they leave their little cave of safety. “We shall need every ounce of mercy that we can get.”

“Says the elf who can wring tears from stone,” mutters Eärwen.

Anairë inclines her head to Nerdanel, and turns to the shadowed corner that she’s claimed for herself. She kneels, and presses her hands to the stone, and lets herself think not of Varda’s stars or Manwë’s winds or the stone-cliffs of Aulë or the roaring waters of Ulmo.

Manwë is brother to Morgoth, and the other Vala shall follow him in silence and inaction. Nerdanel has said it before, and said it well: they cannot rely on the Valar’s mercy.

But Eru remains unknown to them all still, and at her heart, Anairë is a hopeful being.

She prays to him. To the spaces between the stars, and the cold unknown unexplored, and the darkness so deep it becomes light everlasting beyond it. She bends her mind fiercely to the task, until Anairë feels numb light spilling over her fingers and up her fëa like a benediction.

 _We, too, are your children,_ she says. _I beseech you to remember this. We have not the gifts of the Ainur, but we had your blessing once: I beg of you to remember this today._

Perhaps it will not work. Perhaps Eru has stopped listening, ever since he first formed the world, and her prayers will never reach him. But Anairë is a hopeful being, is she not? She can hope for a brighter world than the one she knows to exist.

And anyhow, the weakness of her limbs has fled now.

…

“Ready?”

Eärwen’s hair is braided back in hunting-braids, a tradition from before ever reaching Aman, she says, and the black dye has faded enough to reveal silver strands underneath, like stars shining through a cloud-spangled sky. Nerdanel’s got enough knives on her body to act as a second layer of steel armor, beyond the functional one that she wears underneath.

Anairë’s hands are damp on wood and steel, but her blood is racing, and her teeth feel sharp enough to whet knives. 

“Together,” she says. “Together, or not at all.”

“Yes,” says Eärwen, and is echoed by Nerdanel, and echoed once more by Anairë, and then they step out into the light.

…

Down and up, each step well-known from two weeks of practice. Anairë does not hold her breath as they pass the invisible, unspoken boundary they haven’t crossed: she only lets her song of concealment and silence go softer and stronger. 

Down and down and down, and there are orcs here the number of which Anairë’s never seen before, and malevolence hanging in the very air, and Anairë’s hands flex on the wooden bow in her hand, flex and flex but do not aim. 

_Not yet,_ she soothes the bloodthirst. _Soon, soon, but not yet._

Nerdanel guides them past the first door, and into the second hallway, which- though it looks smaller- opens into a wider corridor. Then it’s a maze, one which Anairë memorizes; it’s her responsibility. She keeps the song strong on her lips, and does not let herself falter here, now, when all must be perfect. A hundred years of planning, and her people’s pain, and her son’s death: and now Anairë must make any of it, must make _all_ of it, worth something.

Nerdanel takes the most direct route she can, while ensuring they aren’t seen. It’s rather easy; Morgoth’s throne room is in the center of the rabbit warren. It isn’t the getting in that’s difficult, but rather the escape.

At the throne room’s entrance, they pause for the briefest of moments. 

Anairë is the first to reach out, and grip Nerdanel’s wrist, and then Eärwen’s hand tightens on them both, cool and steadying. It is less than a moment. Anairë does not dare to even look at their faces, too afraid of losing her nerve. 

Then Nerdanel steps forwards, and throws the door opens, and starts forwards, her fëa shining so bright that it almost overcomes the brilliance of the Silmarils studding Morgoth’s brow. Anairë can hear a roar, and she sees the way that flame comes towards them: white-hot, a balrog spurred to fury and defense, and, deliberately, does not even let her footsteps slow; trusts Nerdanel to handle it.

Nerdanel’s sword spins in a white arc, flickering in the dim light, and the whip deflects. They move forward, the three of them, into the scorching heat surrounding the balrog, and the token-shields that Nerdanel’s crafted fizzle but hold firm. Anairë does not stop repeating the song, of obscurance, of unimportance, of darkness and secrecy; it is only Nerdanel who is visible right now. Then Nerdanel swings her sword just as they pass through the balrog’s vulnerable underbelly, and it falls with a screech.

 _I am Fëanáro’s wife,_ sings Nerdanel, with her head thrown back and her hair streaming like wildfire, black and red and black and red once more. _I am your doom come alight once more._

It is a long throne-room, as narrated by the people who returned from death. It is a long throne-room, and the largest difficulty that they will have is to reach Morgoth before being stopped. It is a long throne-room, and it is Nerdanel who is the strongest of the three of them, and so she must carry them as far as she can.

Her armor is embedded with tokens of protection, and her song is fair and strong, but Anairë can see the tokens blazing out, too quickly, one after another, one after another, one after another-

And then the last one, in the center of her right arm’s vambrace, turns the color of ash, and Nerdanel spins to a halt.

“Morgoth,” says Nerdanel proudly. “You have taken from me my family, and you have taken from me my peace. I have come for weregild!”

“Weregild,” says Morgoth, for the first time since they first broke in. “You, Fëanáro’s wife. I thought him abandoned and spouse-less?”

Nerdanel’s lip curls. “There is no power in this world that would leave my children motherless.”

“Save death,” hisses Morgoth, and rises, and his hand extends like a flaming, giant meteor, and it comes down crashing on Nerdanel’s head.

Eärwen and Anairë roll to the side, in separate directions, as Nerdanel collapses.

Anairë keeps chanting the song under her breath, curls into a ball around her middle, lets her mind and body be subsumed by the knowledge that she’s unimportant. Only when she’s caught her breath does she rise. 

Nerdanel catches her gaze first: the crumpled form of her body, prone on the scarlet stone. Then, just beyond her, in the aftermath of Morgoth’s flame, is Eärwen, kneeling, shining hair catching and reflecting his terrible light. Her eyes glare up at Morgoth, glowing like beacons.

“Another elf,” says Morgoth, an awful smile spreading over his face. “I killed _her-_ but you, you I shall keep, I think.”

Nerdanel might have retorted. 

Eärwen only sings.

Sings, as Anairë has never heard anyone sing before: Eärwen sings with all the power of her blood, with all the love that she has ever held of Varda, with all the ferocity that she has ever remembered of the time before reaching the light of the Trees, with all the desperation and the steadiness of the elf who survived the death of her people to find love for her family once more. Makalaurë is said to be the finest singer in Aman of his time. If ever anyone hears Eärwen’s song now, they will know her to be the finest singer of _her_ time.

Nerdanel’s purpose had been to bring them as far as she can.

Eärwen’s is to distract them all, and her song _does:_ as a gleaming thing, as a glinting thing, of fury and rage and the pain of her people, of pride everlasting and love unending, of the life that lasts even after death and the light found in the most terrible of shadows.

Morgoth and his lieutenants are frozen, held in place by the sheer power and the vibrancy of Eärwen’s visions. 

Anairë swallows, and moves.

The song is terrible and lovely, like a high, arching bird, spiraling through the air, dancing in the wind. Where Nerdanel’s had been as a plume of flame, Eärwen’s flares like a spray of water, icy and salty and cutting.

 _Rise up,_ she sings, and the thralls in the room stand a little taller than just a moment earlier. Eärwen’s song swells, a wave building to its height. _Rise up, stand up, do what must be done!_

Anairë lets it flow over her. Her own song is thoughtless, by now, but she is so close to the throne; she cannot be wind here, not within Morgoth’s domain, not when wind is Manwë’s power, so she murmurs things of the crackle of fire, of the tiniest licks of fire, those that hold no danger within them, only the promise of future violence. 

The song reaches the peak, and Eärwen’s power, impressive though it is, falters. Anairë can see Morgoth startle, his hand close into a fist. He rises. 

Eärwen’s song tinges with desperation. The power in it rises as well, but now Morgoth is expecting it, and he turns it back on Eärwen, and-

 _Oh, oh, oh,_ thinks Anairë. 

She’s not close enough. Not truly. The angle’s _so_ bad. If she does it, if she tries now-

-Anairë hesitates in the moment when she must act-

-and Morgoth’s spell latches into place around Eärwen, forcing her into silence.

“A precious attempt,” he says, and reaches out, threading a hand through Eärwen’s braids. His voice sounds awfully, _awfully,_ paternal, and kindly, and like a mentor giving advice. “You might have had better luck, little elf, if not for your anger.”

His hands close on the braid, forcing Eärwen’s face back, and Morgoth leans forwards to whisper in a voice that Anairë, too far, manages to hear: “I will enjoy breaking your spirit.”

Still, Anairë hesitates. 

For a moment, the malevolence of Angband stretches her spirit. She thinks of fleeing. She could manage it, too, likely; Anairë’s armed, and her spirit’s strong, and she’s the only one who knows the way out. 

Then she remembers her son.

Arakáno is dead, and this Vala killed him. 

_Screw_ the plan, really. 

The old plan won’t work anyhow, and if they’re going to die uselessly in this forsaken pit, then she’ll not die by shrinking into the shadows. Anairë is a queen and a princess, and she is a woman as well: a mother and a wife and an aunt and a grandmother. She has pride, too, running in her veins alongside the blood, and rage, and grief, and all of it boils down to one very simple thing: she will not die quiet.

The arrow nocked in the wooden bow hewn and carved by her own hand flies, true and truer, and Morgoth’s crown flies off his head to clatter on the stone floor. 

He _howls,_ and Anairë steps forwards, dropping the obscurance to stand before him.

She is no songstress, like Findis or Eärwen. She does not even have Nerdanel’s raw power. She is a wordsmith, trained and mastered; but that will be of no aid here. 

But before everything else, Anairë has always loved dances.

She knows how to dance. She is _good_ at dancing. She _loves_ dancing. She has no training in it, but Anairë _knows_ dancing, knows all the older forms, knows all the newest styles. 

Perhaps it is a paltry thing, this shield that Anairë relies on to survive, but she has nothing left. 

The dance she slips into is a traditional one, buoyed by her determination rather than her anger. It begins simply enough, of the Lamps of old; and the shock of the image being portrayed _now_ is enough to still Morgoth’s rage at least briefly. Anairë has never had to suffer from a lack of imagination, and she uses that to throw the Lamps ever-brighter, to make the mountains ever higher, to make the world ever colder and lovelier. 

Arms up, back extended, legs curving up, knives falling to the floor as she curls down in a controlled fall-

Once there had been a love between Manwë and Melkor. Once there had been understanding between them, the two most powerful, the two most beloved. Anairë cannot understand that understanding, but she knows it existed, and so she sings only of that love. 

Hair tumbling as a rainfall, neck twisting to meet the spine, toes arched-

And of course Melkor made mistakes. Of course he did; everyone does. But his mistakes were so cruelly punished, and so needlessly punished- when none other would have been. 

_Do you remember?_

Hands beneath the chin, shoulders thrown back-

_Oh, do you remember?_

Three steps forwards, and two steps back, and then four steps to the side. This dance ends, traditionally, with two fistfuls of crushed diamonds thrown into the air by the dancer, through the vision they’ve engendered, as their body spins gently to the floor. 

Anairë has no diamonds. 

She only has one thing in her sleeves now, and there is no guarantee of its success. But she hasn’t become who she is by overthinking things that don’t need overthinking: she must trust in their plans, as she’s never trusted before. 

Anairë throws the Vala-stopping tokens straight into the air, through the mist of the vision, at Morgoth. 

Even as the image shatters, Anairë slides seamlessly into the next dance, the most difficult of the Noldor: the _Lílta Ilcaüva,_ the Dance of Gleaming Future, which does not rely on the dancer’s skill alone to craft the visions, but rather their imagination, and their innovation, and their intricacy as well. It is not a prophecy; it is just a dream given color and vibrancy by the power of the dancer. It is danced only very rarely, and only by the finest dancers in all of Tirion. Anairë herself has danced it only thrice in her life, all in private; once in front of her mother, and once in front of no other, and once in front of Nolofinwë, to tell him that she is pregnant with Findekáno. Even those dances have been closely-held secrets, because an untrained elleth dancing _that_ dance would have caused too much of a stir.

Only the finest of dancers know the motions well enough to bring life to their visions. Only the finest of dancers know which curve of the wrist will heighten the watcher’s emotion, or diminish it, or draw them further into the dream.

Anairë is not the finest of dancers, but she’s got desperation and love like a shield and a shining sword in her palm, and she’ll make it enough.

In and out, a rolling twist of her waist to align her hips with her knees, and-

Manwë will forgive Melkor one day. They are brothers: Anairë knows brothers, and knows sons, and knows it will come. It might take a long time, but the Valar have those years. It matters not what Melkor does, for the forgiveness shall come inevitably. Unconditional is their love, and unconditional shall it remain.

_Can you see? Oh, do you remember what used to be? Can you think of what can be?_

There is no wind in Angband, so Anairë lets fire twist about her wrists instead, a winking flare of white and scarlet and gold. She is of the Noldor, and has wedded into a line of craftsmen without compare, and she can control this little fire without difficulty: this flame of Morgoth’s, which shall never go out, for Manwë _shall_ forgive Melkor, this Anairë knows, this Anairë can swear-

_Remember, if you can! Remember, if you dare!_

And would that not be a lovely world, where Melkor rules with Manwë by his side, fierce and ferocious and fell and fey and grand as none else can dream? Would that not be the best future?

Two rolls, and the clatter of wooden coins on the floor around her, and the visions are bright, bright, bright-

Anairë’s hand closes on Morgoth’s crown, as she’s been approaching since beginning the dance, and the power in the Silmarils almost blazes up her mind, almost makes her stumble. She’s grateful- more than she can ever put into words- that Nerdanel had insisted that they practice their drills until they became more than thought and pure instinct, because that’s all that keeps the visions going. 

_Remember! Remember!_

_Dream of a better life! Awake, and dream, and remember it!_

And here, now, Anairë feels the the briefest of hesitances. 

(She’s spent years dreaming about Morgoth’s dearest wishes. She’s spent years thinking of the best way to have her vengeance on him. She’s spent years wanting it with deliberate, savage fury. 

Walking into a throne room that would look like Ilmarin remade if Ilmarin were to lie underground, Anairë had known exactly what Morgoth wanted.)

It is a cruel thing that she will do. It is hurtful. The vision she has woven around Morgoth holds him in thrall, because he had told the truth to Eärwen: without her anger pricking him into awareness, he would not have been able to resist. Anairë’s never minded taking lessons to heart if she knows them to be helpful, not even if they come from the worst of mentors. The vision she has crafted is all of Morgoth’s deepest desires, given life and hue and depth until it appears irresistible. To destroy it is so deliberately is, undeniably, cruel.

Anairë does not want to think she’s a cruel being.

She’s never wanted to be called that. But Morgoth’s forces killed Arakáno. Morgoth hung Maitimo from a cliff for thirty years. Morgoth slew Finwë and began this entire mad venture.

Anairë is hopeful and kind and loving. She is also ruthless and vicious and unforgiving: and while she can forgive some things, hopefully, eventually- she can never never _never_ forgive the death of her youngest child. 

She looks up at Morgoth, and then to Eärwen, still caught in his power, and takes the monster within her that she’s spent years caressing and cajoling and silencing, the monster that she’s fed stories of vengeance, the monster that burst into life with Arak _á_ no’s death: and lets it out.

One breath in, one breath out, and she lets the power of the Silmarils sing out from her voice, for the first time since walking into Angband, loud and louder and louder still, calling as one calls the dead:

_REMEMBER!_

The dream of Melkor and Manwë, shining side-by-side, collapses to white-hot embers, collapses to ashes and dust. Morgoth screams so loudly that Anairë falls to her knees, ears bleeding. She lifts her head just in time to see him starting towards her, vibrating with fury, shaking with hatred, and Anairë rolls to the side, praying the tokens will act.

She has no shields left, now, other than trust.

…

…

(“I will come with you to Beleriand,” Eärwen had said, hand heavy on the token that could spell both war and freedom and death. “But you’ll have to remake these.”

“No,” Nerdanel had replied immediately.

“Why?” Anairë had asked. Then, rethinking her question: “How do you want it remade?”

“I won’t have us becoming needless killers. Our path is to Angamando, and to Morgoth, and no other. Remake these so they need all three of us to activate them. Not one, and not two: but all three. So we all make the decision to kill, and none of us is blameless, just as none of us is to blame.”)

…

(“Together,” Anairë had said, before they walked into Angband. “Together, or not at all.”)

…

Eärwen is frozen by Morgoth’s own power. 

This is her fate, always: to watch those she loves die, to remain behind and pick up the pieces. Nerdanel at least is not aware of what is happening. Anairë shall die, too, now, silently, bitterly. But Eärwen is frozen and held, watching and pained and furious. 

They’d assumed Morgoth would strike Eärwen down, as he’d struck Nerdanel. Of course he wouldn’t, not in hindsight; why would he behave the same? Why would things ever be so simple?

Morgoth yanks her head back by the braid, and Eärwen would weep for the sharp, unexpected pain. 

Would weep, if not for the arrow that streaks through the air and knocks his crown off his head.

 _Anairë,_ thinks Eärwen, hopelessly, exhausted, drained. _Oh, dear heart. Oh, sister-of-my-soul. I cannot save you. I wished for- I wished to- I would have-_

She cannot even speak now.

But Anairë knocks Morgoth’s crown to the floor, and she does not sing out, nor follow the plan. Instead, she sinks into the opening motions of… a dance?

It takes Eärwen a long time to recognize it: it’s an old dance, so old that it’s common to both the Teleri and the Noldor, taught to them by Nessa while on the Great Journey. A dance of the oldest years, before even the Trees were formed, when the Lamps still shone on the land and the Valar still dwelt in Middle-Earth.

The visions that Anairë shows are so breathtaking that Eärwen finds herself weeping, soundless and motionless: for all that was lost, and forgotten, and never regained. The world that Anairë constructs is a shining one, unmarred and perfect, with no room for grief, with no space for discontent. 

Eärwen had never known Anairë to be able to dance like this.

For Anairë shatters her own visions by throwing the tokens _straight at Morgoth’s face,_ and then slides into the stance of a dance when Eärwen _knows_ no dance opens like that, which means she’s-

Eärwen’s breath would catch, if she could breathe in anything more than the shallowest of motions.

The _Lílta Ilcaüva_ is a dance the likes of which Eärwen’s seen danced a sum total of five times in her life: three in Tirion, where the Noldor assuredly enjoy the dance more than the Teleri or the Vanyar; once in Alqualondë and once in Vanyamar. Even masters of dance don’t do it without years of practice; they spend _months_ on the meditation alone.

And here is Anairë, dancing, with a fervor and a skill that Eärwen’s never seen before: beautiful, earthshatteringly beautiful. Here is Anairë: dancing, and succeeding in dancing the _Lílta Ilcaüva._

Her steps flow over the stone of Angband’s throne room like liquid fire. The visions of Morgoth’s rule over Arda glow bright. Everyone watching is transfixed, because the _Lílta Ilcaüva_ is one of very few dances crafted by the elves that yet holds all the majesty and all the power of the Valar’s creations.

Eärwen does not let herself get lost in the visions. Instead, she watches Anairë, bird-boned Anairë, stone-hearted Anairë, who dances in ever-tightening spirals over to the crown she knocked off Morgoth’s own head. Fire-eyed Anairë, the first elf to hold the Silmarils since Morgoth stole them. 

Anairë, queen and woman and friend and mother: who looks straight into Eärwen’s eyes as she speaks for the first time since entering Angband, and lets the power of the Silmarils strengthen it far beyond what any of them could have managed alone, and lets it become a scream high and furious enough to silence everyone within the room.

…

 _Remember,_ Anairë had said. 

Eärwen feels the vestiges of Nerdanel wake, called back by Anairë’s scream, and the blaze of the tokens as she activates them from her end. She feels the threads of Anairë’s own desperation, as she activates them from her own end. Eärwen, frozen by Morgoth’s own power, _frozen,_ feels her heart tighten. Feels herself scream, soundless, motionless, helpless. 

They need all three, and Eärwen cannot move, and Eärwen _must,_ or else the tokens are but coins of wood and nothing more.

_I will save you, dear heart._

Eärwen had sworn.

Not by any power higher than herself, but Eärwen has never needed someone else to hold her to her word when it becomes necessary. Her choices are her own: her decisions are ever her own. 

And she’s always been stronger than she knows.

Eärwen could not have done anything if Morgoth had been any less focused on Anairë and his wrath. Even now she cannot do much of anything; her fingers are so _numb-_

But muscle does not need to be felt to know it is there, and Eärwen is the Swan-Princess of Alqualondë and the Pearl-Queen of Tirion, and she forces her arm to move, _move,_ one handspan and then two, until it brushes the tokens within her own pocket.

 _Remember,_ she commands of the spells sung into it that lie in quiescence. _Remember what you are. Remember what you were made to be._

And the tokens built to stop him, to silence him, to confuse and confound him: they come to life.

Morgoth falters as light blazes up around him, and Anairë ducks forwards, unhesitating, to drag Eärwen away. The further they get, the more control Eärwen has over her limbs; by the time they reach Nerdanel’s collapsed form, she’s almost able to walk properly. Eärwen winces, as Morgoth starts to scream, high and horrible and ear-shattering, and bats aside one of the balrogs that dares to move after Anairë and Eärwen, before starting to shred another balrog to pieces with hands that glow like forgefire.

But where Eärwen pauses, Anairë doesn’t. She swiftly scoops Nerdanel into her arms- it looks ridiculous, but her arms aren’t trembling, and it’s quite clear that the Silmarils give her a strength she would not be able to manage alone- and then, because they still have not finished their mission, they _run._

…

(Nerdanel marched in for the fury of her husband’s memory and her children’s pain. Eärwen sang for the thralls of Angband to rise up against their masters. Anairë danced for Morgoth to remember his past.

All of this is true.)

(But here is more truth:

Nerdanel marched more than three-quarters the length of the throne room, carried onwards by the memory of her grief, and when she fell before Morgoth’s might her fall served as nothing more than the distraction it was supposed to be. Eärwen sang the words _rise up,_ and did not mean it simply for the thralls of Angband: Morgoth rose to meet her, and approached her, and he’s never offered anyone that kind of an honor that was not a Maia, coming into a position that allowed Anaire to knock his crown to the floor and retrieve it. Anairë danced a dance that asked everyone to remember, and it ensnared Morgoth for long minutes, and it allowed her to get the crown, yes, but also: she sang to _remember,_ and that song called Nerdanel back from her unconsciousness.)

…

Formenos had shields the likes of which protected it from the worst of Morgoth’s powers. Nerdanel has those same shields on her skin, now, keeping her from death if not from injury. Morgoth’s power had cut her down, and Nerdanel had fallen with it, but not as utterly as it would have done to any other elf. 

Morgoth really should have been more careful with his secrets.

…

Anairë leads them up and out, and her song is more of a shout than a true melody, graceless and barely utilitarian; Eärwen can barely hear it over the ringing in her ears from Morgoth’s screams.

Eärwen saves her breath for when they finally make it out.

The first sip of fresh air is a balm on her lungs. The second feels like a revelation. The third brings reason to her mind.

 _“No,”_ she says, digging her feet in, and drags Anairë over to a loose overhang. 

It’s shadowy and hidden between two carts, and they cannot go much further with Nerdanel still as weak as she is. If they push themselves now, then Morgoth might realize it and follow, and they need him to remain in Angband for the final piece to fall into place.

 _Wake-Nerdanel-up,_ she gestures quickly, through hand signals. _Recover-first-later-escape._

Anairë’s eyes narrow, and then she nods, before laying Nerdanel out in the sparse space. _You-heal?_

Eärwen grimaces, but bends over Nerdanel. She can scarcely hear herself; the healing will not be very good. The very air of Angband does not lend itself to such things as healing or laughter or kindness, and Eärwen doesn’t dare to call upon such things with great force either, for fear that she’ll call upon the attention of some errant Maia hanging too close. 

She’ll have to get _creative,_ then.

So Eärwen sings of fire- the fire of a sun’s rays, spreading over the surface of Arda. She sings of darkness- of the darkness in Makalaurë’s hair, in Carnistir’s hair, cold as night and ever-welcome. She reaches for Nerdanel’s fëa and reminds her of Maitimo’s rage, of the unforgiving nature of their family, of the pride and the hate and the hand ever-reaching higher. 

There is one very, very good way of working Nerdanel up: to insult her family to her face, and stand back to watch the fireworks explode over the unwary bystanders.

And in a land where Eärwen cannot sing of love, she thinks that anger is a good substitute indeed.

…

Nerdanel recovers slowly, in fits and bursts over the next minutes. She’d survived the full force of Morgoth’s powers in the same manner that Formenos had: through Fëanáro’s shields, which had ensured it hadn’t turned to ash and dust, and which had, now, anchored to Nerdanel’s skin, saved her from death. Even now, her recovery is remarkable; she swallows the miruvórë that Eärwen forces down her throat after only a few minutes, and her cheeks grow less sallow almost immediately after that. 

But it isn’t quick enough.

Anairë returns a few minutes after that, a scraggly bunch of athelas tight in her fist that she shoves into Nerdanel’s mouth.

“We must move,” she breathes into Eärwen’s ear. “Quickly. The mobilization that’s happening now- there’s confusion, but if that fades-”

“We need her to activate the fire-tokens,” Eärwen replies. “Two of us aren’t enough. Let her recover enough to _walk,_ Anairë.”

“I just-”

“Patience,” says Eärwen firmly. “It has brought us this far.”

Anairë sags, a little. “I find myself a little too worked up,” she whispers. “I didn’t- he wasn’t in position. I had to act. And the only thing I could think of doing was to dance.”

“It was the loveliest dance I’ve ever seen,” Eärwen tells her, completely truthful. “And the most frightening.”

The corner of Anairë’s mouth quirks up, into a smile, though her eyes remain focused. “How much longer?”

“Not much,” says Nerdanel, and levers herself upright with a groan. She leans forwards and starts massaging her legs, hissing out through her teeth. Her hair spills down over her shoulders, and in the dullness of Angband it looks as red as its natural color. “What happened after he knocked me out?”

“Not _here,”_ says Anairë. “Give it until-”

Eärwen nudges Nerdanel to her feet. Before they leave the little cocoon, she turns to Nerdanel, and she whispers, “Anairë _danced.”_

Nerdanel sputters to a halt, and Anairë huffs irritably, and Eärwen grins; and they set off to escape Angband properly.

…

They stop once they’ve left the valley, right where the downward curve of the hill flattens out, and split up. This is the true battlefield: the most danger they’ve been in since walking out of the Fen of Serech, not including, of course, walking into Morgoth’s throne room with every plan to steal the most powerful Vala’s most favored items. But this is the battlefield that they’ve chosen, seeded thrice-over, and that’s the only advantage that Eärwen can think of right now.

Eärwen walks to the west- she’s supposed to go to the south, but that’s the closest position from their exit out of the valley, and Nerdanel’s still shaky enough on her legs to convince Eärwen to switch their places.

So: Anairë to the east, and Eärwen to the west, and Nerdanel to the south as a triangle, stabilized and focused by the fact that the centroid of that triangle is the entrance to Angband.

It isn’t so much that they’re separated and defenseless that represents the danger now: rather, it’s _what_ they’re doing which can kill them. 

In the time before Fëanáro’s flight, when Morgoth was Melkor and attempted to seduce Fëanáro to his side, he had given Fëanáro a text of elven physiology. Any other elf might have destroyed the information. Fëanáro, who- like his wife, like his brother’s wife- had never hesitated to divorce information from their source, even unto Morgoth himself, had not burned any of it.

That text had saved untold lives on the Helcaraxë. 

That text had saved Maitimo’s life, after Findekáno’s rescue. 

And that text had also written out Morgoth’s destruction.

In Beleriand, there are storms the likes of which Aman has never seen, and they’re even fiercer in the mountains. Thunder roars and lightning crashes and the world is lit up into electrum and the briefest flashes of light: and in the body of every elf, every last one, there is a similar lightning storm. Morgoth had stated in that book, baldly, that the easiest way to stop an elf in their tracks was to hijack that lightning storm, and flood them with too _much_ lightning.

In Formenos, Fëanáro had spent decades building up shields the likes of which nobody else had ever considered. He’d woven experimental shields beneath the obvious ones; it was one of those experimental shields that saved his sons’ lives as they escaped. It was one of those shields that managed to stand against Morgoth _and_ Ungoliant after they’d eaten the Valar-forsaken _Trees._

They’d both fled Aman immediately after, and Eärwen strongly suspects that their flight had been spurred on by fear of _Fëanáro_ as much as the other Valar. 

But Morgoth had fled Aman too quickly- Fëanáro still had that ability to stop him, didn’t he? And anyone that Fëanáro taught would also have that ability. Had there been more time- had Fëanáro been calmer, or slower- the elves might have discovered that information, and they might have survived everything. But there _hadn’t_ been any time, not by the end of it, not through the confusion of Fëanáro’s flight and the Kinslaying and the return of Arafinwë’s people and all the blame and hurt and grief.

Formenos lay in ruins, and Fëanáro died before he could recover himself enough to come up with a proper plan to assault Morgoth and _use_ the tools he had, and his son and heir was tortured inside of Angband for years on end, long enough to assure Morgoth that the shield in Formenos was an accident rather than a part and parcel of war.

Without Nerdanel, it might well have been.

But Nerdanel had gone to Formenos, and she’d studied the stones as only a stone-carver could, and she’d then snuck into the vault that Morgoth ravaged, and she’d retrieved the scraps of Fëanáro’s notes to understand what he’d done. 

Here is what Eärwen knows: if one harnesses lightning properly, it can stop an elf in their tracks. The Ainur are not so different from the Eldar. When Morgoth was Melkor, the people of Alqualondë rioted time and again because when he walked on the sand he turned it to glass. In Vanyamar, they sing of Melkor’s _blood of flame._ In Tirion, the _Lílta Ruinë,_ the Fire-Dance, has its roots in the dance that Nessa taught them to worship Melkor.

Fire is Morgoth’s domain as the wind is Manwë’s. Fire and flame and fury: and if the Ainur are not so different from the Eldar, they are different enough to have an element to which they belong. If it is not lightning, it does not matter. 

They cannot kill him, but they can _stop_ him, and that’s what matters.

Fire is Morgoth’s domain, and fire is therefore the element to which Morgoth is most attuned. Fire is what he is most sensitive to.

And sensitivity, used correctly, interpreted properly, is nothing less than a weakness.

For the past weeks, Eärwen and Anairë and Nerdanel have sown tokens of fire into the earth. These are not the same ones that stopped Morgoth in his tracks- those are more powerful, and more direct, and likely to be the things that will frighten any other Vala who hears of the innovation. These are simply tokens that call upon the elements around them; they act as conduits, activated by Eärwen’s song, strengthened by the rituals that Nerdanel’s spent the past hundred years perfecting.

Kneeling on the grass, Eärwen starts to sing.

She cannot hear Anairë or Nerdanel yet; it will take some time before they reach that level. For now, it’s just the single plume of fire that comes from the token embedded beneath the grass, hot enough to blister Eärwen’s wrists. 

She swallows. Then she drops her voice deeper- not quite an octave- and sings again, softly and gently and coaxing, and the fire grows higher. But it isn’t that which interests Eärwen: she focuses instead on the roots underneath, where the fire spreads tiny fingers outwards outwards outwards, spurred onwards by Eärwen’s exhortations, and just manages to touch the nearest token.

A second plume of fire comes from that one, blazing blue and then cooling to a yellow so insubstantial it would be easily tripped over if not for the heat coming from it. 

Eärwen swallows, again, through a dry mouth. They’ve forgotten to take the water canisters from Nerdanel. it’s a rookie mistake, one that their children would never have made. The third flare takes Eärwen by surprise- it’s white, and underneath the shining sun it looks alternating silver and gold, like Artanis’ lovely hair.

Distantly, Eärwen thinks that the distraction and dizziness is not a good thing. But they’ve spent too long practicing this; she can’t stop now. She doesn’t know if she could stop even if she wished it.

She hums the last part of the song, and watches the three flares connect in a triangle of fire, with Eärwen herself at the center. Hands clenching, Eärwen sings louder and louder still, lets the vision of the fire carry her onwards: it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful, pale as the stars, shining as the stars, and Eärwen loves starfire as only a Teleri can love it. It’s so beautiful that she can even forget her own pain and discomfort, lost in blue and red and white and gold and brilliance so lovely it hurts to see, even as she cannot look away.

_A triangle._

_As Fëanáro once was, with Nolofinwë and Arafinwë._ Eärwen swallows, once more, and the tears in her eyes almost eclipse the flame, blurring beyond recognition. _As I once was, with my brothers._

_As we never will be again._

When she opens her eyes again, Eärwen’s hands are cold.

She is Teleri, of Alqualondë’s sands and Olwë’s pearl-palaces, of the salted fish and the high seas and the twilight sky. She opens her eyes, and her grief is a raging river within her breast, unstoppable and sloppy, and the flame hot and angry ringing her is a fierce, deep, actinic blue.

Over the crackle of grass and the hiss of flame, Eärwen hears Nerdanel’s voice- a high, sweet song- and Anairë’s, further away, shriller and angrier. She squints, looking _through_ the fire, into the valley below.

The fire is traveling swiftly. 

There are three portions: the blue one is Eärwen, and she suspects the white to be Anairë’s glinting silver and gold, and the cooler red to be Nerdanel, still recovering from Morgoth’s actions. The fire spills over the lip of the valley and past the guardtowers, too quick to be stopped, too hot to do anything other than kill everyone in its path.

It reaches the gates, and licks at the wood and stone for long minutes, long enough for Eärwen’s breath to grow short. If it doesn’t work…

But then something gives way- perhaps a hinge, perhaps a pylon, perhaps some thinner portion of the construction- and there’s a roar the likes of which Eärwen’s never heard before, deep and cracking and reverberating through her chest, and the fire surges high with savage triumph. 

Angband has been breached.

The fire will not stop- it’s a self-sustaining cycle, and it will last all the longer with the more bodies it consumes. Once it reaches Morgoth- and it _will,_ because fire shall ever return to its master- 

It will be as a lightning strike to an elf.

Eärwen ducks away swiftly, underneath and between the plumes of fire, extricating herself as gracefully as she can manage while her legs feel like jelly and her head still throbs. 

She heads east, then south, so she finds Nerdanel, on her knees and looking like she’s managing even that only by the dregs of her strength. She doesn’t react, not even when Eärwen pulls her arm over her own shoulder and drags them both upright.

But with the physical touch, Eärwen feels the sudden snapping link of ósanwë.

_What is your amilessë, Eärwen?_

_My amilessë?_

_Your ataressë is Eärwen, yes?_ Nerdanel doesn’t sound very patient, but then, she never does. _What did your mother name you?_

_Does it matter?_

_Yes._

_Avahaira._ Eärwen feels her distaste at the very name coloring her thoughts, and she’s too exhausted to try to control the emotion. _She says she did not see anything when she birthed me, but rather only felt the same kind of grief she felt when Elwë left them. The grief of separation, and the grief of longing, and the grief of- well- distance._

(Avahaira refers to the remote places, the far-off places; it indicates those places that are forbidden. To name a daughter that name while leaving Endórë, before ever seeing the blessed isle of Aman: it had been yet another warning that made the Teleri- already hesitant- cold and wary, and happier by far to settle at Alqualondë than Tirion. But it was after that, over the long years in Aman’s comfort and joy, that Eärwen’s name had come to mean a curse to her specifically- for it meant something forbidden and far away and griefstricken, and why would those who had everything they wished for go somewhere forbidden?

 _Eärwen_ is a name of little substance. Sea-maiden; as remarkless a name as Olwë could find. It’s a running joke in their family that Olwë is terrible at naming children, but it doesn’t _matter-_ he’d given Eärwen the choice of making the name her own, when her mother had given her only a burden.

It’s why she chose it; it’s why she chose, for each of her children, a name unremarkable and wide-ranging and simple as she could manage.)

Nerdanel’s surprise is a faint thing, like the blush on a courtier’s cheek; made more obvious by its presence than its strength. _That is a cruel name for a child._

_Hence why I don’t go by it._

_I don’t either,_ says Nerdanel wryly. 

_You mentioned it earlier. When you spoke with Maitimo._

_Aparuivë,_ says Nerdanel. She inhales sharply when her foot catches on a root and they nearly tumble, but then Eärwen manages to get her feet under her and stabilize them both. _Wildfire. Inferno._ She snorts. _I thought it referred to Fëanáro, for so many years. Now… I think it might have been this._ She breathes in slowly, and then pulls away from Eärwen, stumbling for a few feet before walking properly. _A fire so wild it burned Morgoth himself!_

 _I thought mine referred to Tirion,_ Eärwen replies. _Well. It might well have meant Aman. I wondered- when Arafinwë left Alqualondë- if I ought not to have followed him. If that was my destiny._

 _Then you followed your children, even after your husband regained your senses._ Nerdanel makes a sound from the back of her throat, and it’s both derisive and sardonic. _It’s why I couldn’t stand you for so long, you know? Why was_ Arafinwë _the one to get all the sense in the family?_

_Now I know you’re not alright._

For Nerdanel to be saying such things… either she’s on the verge of death, she’s struck her head badly, or Morgoth laid a spell on her. 

“No,” says Nerdanel aloud, voice cracking. She grimaces at it, rubbing her throat, before sighing. “I’m- I should’ve said it before. Blaming you for not suffering was unfair. Particularly when your brothers died. When your people died.” Her lips twist. “I don’t like being unfair.”

Of course she doesn’t, and of _course_ that’s the only reason to apologize. 

Nerdanel’s wiser than her family and kinder than them- slower to temper, slower to perceive threats or insults- but that isn’t saying much, not in the larger scheme of things. Not when her family is made up of the bloodiest, most infuriating individuals in all of Arda.

Eärwen realizes, suddenly, that she’s still got that mental link to Nerdanel, and she’s probably revealed a good amount of her aggravation and anger to her, when they don’t have the time or energy to properly fight.

But Nerdanel only smiles at Eärwen, less a smile and more teeth bared, but Eärwen pays attention to the loose set of her shoulders- Nerdanel’s a sculptor, and she holds her anger in her muscles and not her face- and there’s no honest anger there.

“I know what they are,” says Nerdanel. “I know what we are; I always have. Fëanáro would not have wed me if I were anyone other than what I am. He would not have loved me if I were any less.”

Eärwen’s throat hurts. This is not the time for this conversation, but Nerdanel doesn’t look like she’s going to wait. “I am not less than you.”

“No,” says Nerdanel thoughtfully. “You are not. I once thought you were: you, who had everything she ever wished for, princess and then queen and beloved by so many, who never had to fight for a single thing in her life. I could respect Anairë- she’d lost dance, as she’s told every star in the sky- but you? What had you had, that you’d not had given to you?”

“My uncle,” says Eärwen, flatly, to hide the growing lump in her throat. Where, by all the Valar, is Anairë? “Ages before ever you were a light in your parents’ eyes. What did you lose, Nerdanel, then, if you’re so unloved? You had a mother, a father, a sister- Fëanáro- _yes,_ Fëanáro- and seven sons.”

“It wasn’t loss that I was looking for,” says Nerdanel. “Not then, at least.” Which is at least truthful, because she’s _certainly_ been looking and feeling viciously vindictively jealous of all that Eärwen’s had over the past century that Nerdanel’s lost. “I was looking for fight.” The faintest of smiles flickers over Nerdanel’s face. “And I never could see it.”

Eärwen doesn’t know whether it’s the truthfulness or the smile that washes away her anger. But it does, and she’s so _tired,_ and without her anger to sustain her, she only feels like she could fall on the stone and grass beneath her feet and sleep for a thousand years.

“If someone ever shouts at me,” Eärwen tells Nerdanel, softly, “I stop listening to them. Once the shouting begins, I am _done._ So if that’s your definition of a spine or a person’s strength, then you ought to stop looking for it in me.”

“Which is why I said I thought it, not think it.” Nerdanel shrugs, then turns unerringly to where Anairë’s coming towards them. “And also why I apologized.”

Eärwen sighs. There’s no use to any of this. Nerdanel’s not going to change who she _is,_ at her core, and Eärwen certainly doesn’t have the patience or the will to teach her to. And anyhow, Anairë’s here; they just need to find a place to stay safe for the next few days until Maitimo and his men come to pick them up. 

Then Anairë’s next to them. She’s got ash speckling her dark hair, and her hands are tight on the Silmarils, the iron crown a bare spot of darkness between the Silmarils’ glow. She doesn’t look as bad as either Eärwen feels or Nerdanel appears- perhaps it’s because she wasn’t struck down by Morgoth, or because the Silmarils themselves are aiding her- Eärwen remembers the flood of white fire from the opposite end of the valley, almost dwarfing Eärwen and Nerdanel’s own.

Perhaps it’s the Silmarils, but Eärwen doesn’t think it is.

Anairë’s not the kind of person to burn bright or burn fiercely, but she’s the kind of person whose flame will never go _out,_ whose strength is not in its ferocity but in its steadiness.

Pushed to the brink, little wonder that she’s got more left to her than either Eärwen or Nerdanel.

“Nerdanel,” she says, eyes bright as stars. “Eärwen.” She reaches out, and her hand clamps on Eärwen’s wrist, on Nerdanel’s elbow, and drags them both into an embrace. Into their ears, she breathes, “We _did_ it.”

When she releases them, Nerdanel laughs, loud and high. Eärwen blinks, once and twice and thrice, and then sinks to her knees, swamped by such relief that her knees go weak. They’ve done it. They’ve _pulled it off:_ the wildest and maddest venture in all of Arda.

(To be fair, Fëanáro’s flight would have been the madder adventure, but _he_ hadn’t actively planned to sneak into Angband with two elves at his back and nobody else in all of Arda aware of his actions.)

Eärwen looks up at Anairë, and beams, and says, “It’s over, now.”

She’s expecting Anairë to smile back. She’s expecting Anairë to do many things, the least of which is smile back.

But the laughter fades from Anairë’s face, replaced with the same expression she’d had in Alqualondë when trying to hide the boats: guilt, masked with indifference, and discomfort, and fear. 

“Anairë,” says Eärwen slowly.

Nerdanel realizes that something’s happening, and turns to look at them both. She’s not frowning, not yet, and it’s that which calms Eärwen- the fact that Nerdanel doesn’t know what’s happening either, there’s no conspiracy building up around Eärwen.

“We stopped Morgoth,” says Anairë. She lifts the hand not holding the Silmarils to gesture to the field of fire that they’ve just escaped. “But how long do you think this will hold him? A hundred years, a thousand- ten thousand- we’ll still be _alive_ then, and knowing our children… they will be as well, and leading the army against him.”

“We knew that when we started,” says Nerdanel coolly.

Anairë’s free hand clenches into a fist. “I’ve been thinking about that. We cannot stop him. Not forever. I know that. But… we also know who can.”

“No,” says Eärwen, realization dawning.

“It’s the only choice we have!”

“Be reasonable!” snaps Eärwen.

“I am,” replies Anairë. “I _am._ Don’t you think I’ve thought about this? We don’t have a _choice._ We have to do this.”

“Anairë,” says Nerdanel, interposing herself between them, voice as soft as she can make it, “what do you want to do?”

“The Eldar can never stop a Vala,” says Anairë, looking up into Nerdanel’s eyes. “Only a Vala can do that.”

“But the Valar are in-” Nerdanel looks between Eärwen and Anairë, and goes white. _“No.”_

“We wanted to end this.” Anairë lifts her chin. “Which means we have to do what must be done.”

“And return to _Aman,”_ says Eärwen, staggering over to a tree to slide down it. She isn’t certain when she stood up, nor when she decided she needed to sit down again, but her head really, really hurts. “Which we left.”

Anairë closes her eyes, and then opens them again, and they’re large, and shimmering, and backlit from the Silmarils. She’s never looked lovelier to Eärwen, not even in the light of the Trees. Determination and resolve suits her narrow face. 

“Yes,” she says.


	4. our hearts are unafraid, we're making our own fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s crying; Anairë can barely see him through the tears blurring her vision. The cold is stinging through her fingers, and the water is wicking the wool of her dress to her skin, and still all she can feel is the thud of Nolofinwë’s heart and the gasps in her own ears. Then Findekáno is there, scooping her up from the side, and so is Turukáno, and so is- is that-
> 
> “Írissë,” gasps Anairë, and twists in Nolofinwë’s hold to grip her daughter closer and closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIGHT! So you can see some further notes for this fic [here,](https://dialux.tumblr.com/post/623313040683810816/heres-to-the-strongest-fighter-heres-to-the) on tumblr. There's a lot of... headcanons floating about this story that I might, one day, explore further. Who knows??? I certainly don't!
> 
> I began writing this story for Tolkien Gen Week- I love gen fic a LOT, if there's anyone out there who... doesn't know that about me, lolol. And this story really does encapsulate the week's themes to me, up to and including the prompts. 
> 
> So: many thanks for @arofili for organizing the event and spurring me to actually write this fic instead of daydreaming about it XDD, to everyone who commented/kudo'd/bookmarked/etc, because you are all lovely and wonderful and very, very kind to a person who's only slowly coming into the fandom xxx

“We take one of the Silmarils and return on the same boat.” 

Anairë eyes Nerdanel closely, then continues when she doesn’t have a measurable response. Or at least Nerdanel thinks she doesn’t have a response; she’s a bit too lost in shock and exhaustion to have her face change with the maelstrom of emotions in her mind.

“It will work. I’ve dreamt it.”

“Oh,” says Nerdanel, suddenly finding a well of viciousness in her that hasn’t been drained by the fatigue. “If you’ve  _ dreamt  _ it, then it will surely work.”

“Look at me,” says Anairë softly. “Look at me and tell me that I lie.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” says Nerdanel tiredly. But still, Anairë’s deception- the fact that she waited so orc-blooded  _ long  _ to tell them- doesn’t sit rightly with Nerdanel. “I think you dreamt it. I don’t think you know what that dream meant.”

“So kind of you,” she replies, and it’s by the hard edge to her words that Nerdanel knows her to be just as tired; a rested Anairë would never speak so, not even when provoked. It softens Nerdanel’s own rage a little, remembering everything they’ve been through together: if it’s true, and if Anairë has been having these dreams, then it’s just one more burden on her already-burdened soul. 

Nerdanel can blame her for not reacting well. She  _ will  _ blame Anairë for not reacting well. But the mitigating circumstances helps temper that anger.

“How much do you trust the dream?”

Anairë sags a little. “I know it,” she says. “And it makes sense, even if the dream had not come: the only light left of the Trees is within the Silmarils, and the Valar have always loved the Trees too well to be understood. They’ll let us in with one of the Silmarils. And I’m sure they’ll be curious to know what happened in Angband. Right now, the only three people who can tell them are the three of us.”

“That’s if the dolphin tokens don’t work,” says Eärwen.

She’s pressed a hand to her forehead and lain back, head against a tree trunk; she looks utterly exhausted. Nerdanel remembers the fires that burned down from the west- they’d been blue, blue as the ocean and the sky and Eärwen’s own eyes. 

But blue fire also burns the hottest. 

Seeing that from the west, flowing like a river of flame, had startled Nerdanel enough to pull out of the worst of her own fugue. It’d been that which saved her from pouring too much energy into the fires. Or: not too much, because Nerdanel had certainly pushed herself too hard even before the blue fire scared her out of it, but more than too much, more than her abilities until she’d have burned her own bones to ash from it.

“The Silmarils are my husband’s creation.” Nerdanel swallows. “And you’ve heard that blasted oath as well, Anairë. It’s my sons’ heirlooms, now. Not yours. Not the Valar’s.”

_ Not mine, either. _

“I’m not planning to steal it,” says Anairë flatly. “It’s called borrowing. And one of the jewels, not all three; call it an assurance if your sons get jumpy. We’ll be back.”

“If the Valar try to take the Silmaril…”

“They won’t,” she says impatiently. “Because this isn’t the only bargaining chip we have. It’s the flashiest one; it’s the one we’ll need to show them until we can get within earshot. There’s other information we have, though. Information that will keep them… interested.”

“Like what?” asks Eärwen.

Nerdanel speaks before Anairë can. “Like the news of what happened here. The truth of how we stopped Morgoth.”

“And those tokens,” agrees Anairë.

“One to keep the Silmaril, and another to bring them to Angband,” says Eärwen quietly.

“We don’t offer the Silmaril as a bargaining chip,” says Anairë, lips quirking. “We start by telling them to lift the Doom. If there are people who wish to return to Aman- they ought to be allowed. We’ve served our time in abiding the Valar’s disagreements.”

“The Valar created Aman,” Nerdanel points out. “They’ve the right to decide who can live there.”

“Not when they promised us eternal life and then broke that promise,” says Anairë coolly. “They’re the ones who breached the contract first. We did it next, and did it worse with the Kinslaying- but their’s was the mistake of letting Morgoth go, and then not ensuring he was redeemed.” Her lips tip upwards further, into a mirthless smile, when Nerdanel checks herself, mouth half-open. “I was born to be a dancer, perhaps, but I was trained for  _ this.  _ Arguments. Convincing. Debates.”

Eärwen knocks her head back against the tree, making a hollow thunking sound. “If you wish to take one Silmaril to Aman, you’ll want to drop the other two off somewhere.”

Anairë breathes in slowly. “Not drop off,” she says. “I want to split up.”

“Split… up?”

“You’ll be necessary for the negotiations in Aman,” says Nerdanel. She looks into Anairë’s silver eyes, and sees quiet pity there. “Eärwen’s the only one who can steer that boat across the Belegaer.”

“It’s your son coming to meet us,” says Anairë softly. “He’ll be disappointed to see either Eärwen or myself in your position.”

“And you think none of the others will be  _ disappointed?” _

“It’s not just that,” says Eärwen. She would’ve sounded sardonic if there had been more emotion behind the words; as it is, it just sounds flat. “What do you think they’d do to us if they found us with two Silmarils and the third on its way to Aman? A knife to the throat would be the least of our issues.”

“You want me to meet everyone,” says Nerdanel. “You want me to tell them- but this is  _ your  _ Vala-forsaken plan, Anairë! I’ve aided you, I’ve abetted you, but! You must at least- at  _ least-  _ speak to your- your  _ husband-” _

“Nolofinwë will understand,” says Anairë, with the confidence of a woman who knows no such thing will happen but is also too lost in her delusions to admit it. “We’ve always understood that duty must come first.”

Blast it all to Mandos’ halls and back, but that’s a fair point. 

It’s also a snide commentary on Nerdanel and her own husband, but she’s not got the energy to fight now, after everything. 

“So you want me to lie,” Nerdanel says dully. 

“If we aren’t back in twenty years, you tell the truth,” affirms Anairë.

Eärwen laughs, shrilly. “Twenty years! You think it’ll take that long?”

“No. But it  _ might.  _ And if they’re holding us hostage- we’ll need some leverage. Twenty years.” Anairë’s lips twist. “Maitimo stood against Morgoth for thirty, yes? I don’t think the Valar in Aman are so cruel as that- but if they  _ do-  _ we’ll be able to hold for that long.”

Nerdanel sighs. “Fine.  _ Fine.  _ But at least- get some supplies from Maitimo. Before you go. It’s not like we have enough to last you all the way back to the boat.”

“I’d rather not,” says Eärwen.

“No,” agrees Anairë, and starts packing her bag right there, as if she plans to leave immediately.

“No,” says Nerdanel. Then, louder, “No?”

Anairë pauses, eyes fixed on her pack. “No,” she says quietly.

“Why would-” Then, Nerdanel’s brain manages to make the connection between the other two’s silence and their averted faces and the people that Nerdanel’s awaiting. And finally, finally, she feels something other than the numbness that always accompanies using too much Song in too short a time: rage, the heat of it growing until her face feels as red as her hair once used to be. “You’re afraid of him!”

“No,” says Eärwen slowly.

“Not of Maitimo,” says Anairë carefully. But she’s still not looking at Nerdanel, which means there’s more to be said. “But of what he is capable of? Yes. They all participated in the Kinslaying. They all…” 

“-none of them hesitated,” Eärwen finishes. “Not to kill, not for the jewels. If we are to keep the Silmarils from them, it is better that we not remain here. Better that the temptation should not be there at all.”

Anairë smiles, and it is sad, and it is small, and she is finally looking at Nerdanel. “You know this, Nerdanel. When you showed Maitimo what we were planning- you never mentioned the Silmarils. You  _ know  _ this. You were readying yourself for it even before we ever considered it.”

“Not this,” whispers Nerdanel. 

But… she’d avoided those memories which discussed the Silmarils, because she hadn’t known how Maitimo would react. Nerdanel’s not burdened by an oath to the Allfather and the two most powerful Vala; she cannot understand or predict Maitimo’s actions. 

And if  _ Nerdanel  _ cannot predict him, how can she ask Anairë or Eärwen to trust Maitimo?

“We’ll have to split up,” Anairë says again. She reaches out, and touches Nerdanel on her shoulder, gentle as the summer wind. “I am sorry for leaving you with this.”

“You both are risking more.”

“Ah, but I know where you’d rather be.”

Nerdanel closes her eyes briefly. Yes, she’d rather have an enemy she can work against, than the nebulous politics that Anairë’s abandoning her to. Nerdanel’s gone out of her way to avoid politics all her life; when Fëanáro made that impossible, she left him rather than letting him drag her into the public eye.

And now here she is, doing the exact opposite.

“I’m not so selfish as to ruin us now,” she whispers, and then stretches out so her toes rub against the sparse grass around them. “Fine.  _ Fine.  _ Have it your way. But you’re not leaving until dawn at the least.”

“The further we get-” begins Anairë.

“Maitimo is not the worst of evils in Beleriand,” says Nerdanel. She must remember the joys of the world. She  _ must.  _ The sun, the grass, the wind. Her sons, who are not monsters even if they are not the jewels that she remembers from Aman. If she loses her memories to her fear or her grief or her pain, then Morgoth has already won. “If you run too fast and are too weak to battle off some orcs- you’ll die before ever reaching the  _ boat,  _ much less Aman.”

“She has a point,” says Eärwen, who doesn’t look like she’ll be able to stand, much less run halfway across Beleriand.

“I don’t like it,” says Anairë slowly.

“I’ll keep it from him,” says Nerdanel flatly. She doesn’t look at either of the other two: just up, to the sky above them that’s slowly bleeding into the colors of twilight. It would be beautiful if the color didn’t remind her of fire and hurt. Her beautiful sons. Her beautiful, beautiful sons: what has she let them become, that their own aunts fear what they will do? “When we meet. I’ll delay. For as long as possible. I’m not sure how long that will get you- but it will be more than the hours you’re losing by resting tonight.”

Then she closes her eyes and leans back, and though Nerdanel does not sleep- she does not open them either, does not let herself look at anything other than the insides of her eyelids, not until the warmth of dawn pitches over her body once more.

…

_ (Thank you,  _ says Eärwen. Anairë embraces Nerdanel wordlessly.

There are tears, quietly shed and just as quietly sniffed away. There are other words, useless words. There are gifts pressed into Nerdanel’s pack, meant for children that they will not see or husbands they will not meet. There are two Silmarils, shining, in the very bottom of Nerdanel’s pack. Then-

Then, there is silence.)

…

Nerdanel walks east, off of the mountain towards the rising sun. She pauses at dusk to eat some of the bread left in her pack, then sips from a stream and takes the time to wash some more of the dye from her hair. 

It will likely be another two days before Maitimo reaches her, if he’s left Himring and hasn’t stopped along the way.

Nerdanel will not have a better time than this. She uses the water to wash any flakes of blood off, and then cleans the knives in a small fire, and then she does what she has to do.

_ At least, _ she thinks grimly,  _ the Eldar heal fast. _

…

Only after that does she open her mind to him.

Maitimo’s mind is sharp and clean and panicked still, the fear running beneath the orderliness as riverwater beneath ice. 

_ Mother,  _ he says.

_ I’m alive.  _ Nerdanel has spent about twelve hours practicing shearing the emotion from her voice. It’s the only thing that keeps her from fainting.  _ My son. Come to me. _

_ It will be another day. _

_ I think I can survive that,  _ Nerdanel tells him, and lets herself orient on his mind, lets her feet take her towards him.

He laughs, dryly, and bleeds away; so he’s not in contact with her even if the bond is ever-close. Nerdanel breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth. One more day. 

One more day.

…

Anfauglith is rank with orcs.

Some of them are under local commanders, feeding off smaller orc-bands and foraging to survive. Others are running blind with panic, because the plume of fire that Nerdanel and Anairë and Eärwen set is still blazing against the horizon, because their master is- for all intents and purposes- dead. Surely whoever killed him is more dangerous than even the most powerful Vala.

If only they could see Nerdanel now: she’s not recovered fully yet, because she’s still too terrified to sleep properly, and whatever energy she regains from eating bread and berries is being used up to walk towards Maitimo and hide from the roving orc bands.

Nerdanel  _ knows  _ she’s making stupid decisions now.

It still isn’t stopping her from making them.

Like now, when a pack of four wargs are sniffing across the plain for food and she’s got nowhere to go: Nerdanel has a stone outcrop at her back, and her song of silence and obscurance is too flimsy a shield with her power so low to hide her from sight, much less sound and smell.

But Maitimo’s close. 

Not quite close enough as she’d like, but. Beggars, choosers, all of that. 

Nerdanel unsheathes her sword, not bothering to muffle the ringing sound. The wargs orient on her, and she settles into a proper battlestance, knees flexed, thighs apart, shoulders loose, sword high. The first warg to approach her tentatively is treated to a sword slash across its muzzle, and then a sword through its neck.

The second dies too quickly to realize where she is, and she uses the first warg’s corpse to fend off the third as the fourth attacks her from behind; Nerdanel keeps that at bay with her sword, snarls wordlessly, and then heaves, and drops the corpse onto the third warg before lopping the head off the fourth warg. The third dies swiftly, still pinned under its packmate’s body, when Nerdanel stabs it.

Then she straightens, and realizes that she’s managed to get the attention of the wargs’ masters.

_ That was not smart,  _ she tells herself, but brings her sword up anyhow.  _ This is not… smart. _

If she had more energy, she’d take off running. Maitimo’s close, now, very close, and she can feel his mind bolstering her own like a bulwark. The smart thing to do would be to flee to him, and let his army take care of the orcs. But Nerdanel’s lost enough blood and enough sense to do very, very unwise things.

Twenty slavering, beastly orcs coming at her is not a battle she can win on her own. Nerdanel knows this. She also knows that she’d rather die here, like this, on her feet and snarling, than fleeing to her son and not making it.

_ Here lies Nerdanel,  _ she thinks wryly.  _ She who defeated Morgoth, but not his minions. _

(Only later- days later, safe and warm- does Nerdanel realize that she’s broadcast this to literally  _ everyone  _ she’s connected with; she’s too tired to modulate it. It drives Maedhros to spur his horse into a gallop, which is what saves Nerdanel’s life. But it also reveals her presence to both Caranthir and Celegorm, who, in turn, send letters to their brothers asking questions.

Maglor, Amrod and Amras don’t know anything, and Curufin is notorious for his insensitivity to ósanwë. But the steward of Himring replies in Maedhros’ place, that Maedhros left in a rush three nights ago, on his swiftest horse, with forty other warriors, and would not say anything other than that he must go to Angband with immense urgency.

This, unsurprisingly, is deeply concerning to all of them.)

But right then, Nerdanel does not know any of those things. All she knows is that she’s got twenty orcs advancing on her, and she doesn’t even have access to the Silmarils- she’s bound those away well and good lest her sons see them before she’s ready- to scare them off, and she’s so tired that she can barely see straight. 

But Nerdanel has carved stone when more exhausted than this, and she hasn’t broken bones while doing so. And it was Nerdanel who insisted that they practice swordplay until the motions became even more instinctive than breathing. She can do this.

It all becomes a blur after that.

Nerdanel loses her sword at some point, and then knife after knife; she slashes and tosses and guts and spins, fast as a breath of wind,  _ faster.  _ Until she’s out of knives and she’s got nothing left but herself.

But herself and her fists.

_ Maitimo hung off Thangorodrim for thirty years. Fëanáro died before ever avenging Finwë. Arakáno- my  _ sons-  _ I will not- _

It is not quite anger that spurs Nerdanel onwards. But it is something blazing and hot and bright, sharper even than her knives. It is not quite hate. It is not quite grief.

But it gives her energy, and when she reaches the first orc and breaks its wrists before breaking its neck, the others realize that she’s not quite dead yet.

And it’s at this point that Maitimo crests over the hill. Nerdanel’s in the process of shattering one orc’s kneecaps- one of them’s foregone their armor there, and she’s got good, strong thighs to give her feet that extra bit force that will leave the orc writhing and lamed forever. She doesn’t realize who’s there then; she’s too busy tearing herself out of an orc’s grasp. All Nerdanel knows is that there are other people, coming in at her back, and it’s dangerous.

But when she cracks her skull against the orc’s chin and it staggers backwards, Nerdanel stabs it with its own sword and turns to meet the beings there, and she stops.

_ Stops. _

They’re elves. 

It’s Maitimo, on a horse, cleaving orc heads from their bodies and smiling vividly under the spray of black blood on his face. She’d recognize his hair anywhere. It’s her son, her  _ son- _

Nerdanel drops to her knees, and it saves her from the first swing of the orc that had been sneaking up behind her. The whistle of its steel startles her enough to turn around and cut its hamstrings with its fellow orc’s blade, but that’s it; there’s no other orcs coming after Nerdanel now, not when she’s proven to be too difficult a piece of prey. Not when they’re now far more focused on fleeing.

_ I will not meet Maitimo on my knees. _

She grits her teeth and rises, wobbling. The orc-blade makes for a decent crutch, but the earth’s soggy. It had been soggy before Nerdanel ever walked on it, but the blood and other fluids soaking the ground now make it all a cold, uncomfortable slush. It’s both unpleasant to walk on and just plain difficult when Nerdanel’s balance is as shot as it is.

So instead she stands, and watches her son dispatch the rest of the orcs with his people, and smiles when he comes to meet her.

Maitimo slides off his horse and approaches slowly. He wears a helm, but his hair streams out from under it, bright as a banner. When he pulls it off, Nerdanel sees the scars carved into his face: the bones which Nolofinwë’s healers had tried to reset but hadn’t managed properly. There’s a redder scar, livid against his skin, that runs from the corner of his jaw down to his neck. His eyes, too, are not the bright stars that Nerdanel remembers from Aman; these are dimmer and bloodier, less molten silver and more a forged, honed blade.

“Mother,” he says hoarsely.

Nerdanel does not dare move her feet. But she holds out her arms, and waits for him to come, and when he surges forward to wrap himself around her-

_ -“Maitimo,”  _ she cries, and clutches him through the armor, hard enough to  _ dent  _ the armor, tears scudding her face as clouds before the sun. “Oh, my son, my  _ son-” _

A hundred years and more. Grief and pain and the death of her husband and his father. Thirty years of torture. Words of fury, sent as arrows into tender flesh. A lifetime of hatred and loss. Nerdanel holds Maitimo, and cannot stop the hiccuping, howling joy sweeping through her bones.

…

It’s then that she collapses, of course, because the Valar really do hate her.

…

When Nerdanel wakes, she’s on a bed. This is such a novel concept to her- she hasn’t slept on anything other than stone for the past months in Beleriand, and the months before that had been spent on a rocking hammock because Eärwen had insisted that it was the only way to sleep on a boat- that she thinks she’s in Aman and is reaching for the cup of water that’s always on her bedside before the pain stings up her arms, and she hisses, memory and joy rushing through her.

Then she opens her eyes.

Maitimo is slumped at the side of the bed, his hair cascading over his face and shielding it from view. Nerdanel herself has been stripped of the armor she’d worn for months on end- her body feels strangely light- and she panics for a moment before realizing that her pack is set on the low table next to her.

“Ammë,” says Maitimo, voice cracking, and Nerdanel turns back to him. The sleep clears from his gaze a moment later and he blinks, before reaching out his- left, Nerdanel cannot help but notice- hand, and gripping her own. “I did not think this to be possible.”

“Seeing me again?” asks Nerdanel. “Or seeing me without hate in my eyes again?”

“You were very… insistent, the last time we met.”

“Insistent,” says Nerdanel, sucking on the inside of her teeth and disliking the sour taste of it; it’s probably from remnants of the orc blood, which is  _ such  _ a disgusting idea. “Call it what it was, Maitimo. It was not insistence; it was about as furious as I’ve ever been in my life. It was not insistence; it was cruelty.”

Maitimo’s throat works. “I go by Maedhros, now.”

“Maedhros.” Nerdanel looks at him, and lifts an eyebrow. “What does it mean?”

“It’s-” he shakes his head, “-Sindarin. And- does it need to mean something?”

“Sindarin. Truly, you have adapted.”

_ “Mother-” _

“After your father refused the Vanyarin shift for so long, I’d think it would take you longer to do the same.”

“Well, Father’s not here.”

“Mmm. All the better for him. I tell you, it was one of the reasons why I had to leave Aman- the fool couldn’t give me more than a few years of peace, could he?”

The temper fades from Mait- Maedhros’ eyes, bleeding into something softer and more bewildered. “You left Aman because you couldn’t stand to have Father so near to you?”

“All I could think of was his damned fëa,” agrees Nerdanel peaceably. “In Mandos’ Halls. Just being so…  _ annoyingly  _ close.”

“Which led you to defy the Valar.”

“Which means that if he’d been alive, I’d never have come to Endórë.” Nerdanel lifts a shoulder. “But when Anairë was so certain she would come, and I had the best chance to leave Aman that I would ever get, I decided to take it.”

“Speaking of.” Maedhros pauses, and Nerdanel realizes that she’s probably still a little woozy from the exhaustion; tired enough, still, to make the first mistake in this dance. “Where is Anairë?”

_ “Aunt  _ Anairë.”

He pales a little, though Nerdanel doesn’t know if it’s for the sharpness of her rebuke, that the rebuke occurred at all, or at the fact that he has a mother now, to rebuke him. 

“Fine. Aunt Anairë. And Aunt Eärwen. Where are they?”

“Gone.”

“Dead?” he asks sharply.

“No.” 

“They left you alone, then.” His face flushes a little now, anger clear on it; Nerdanel wonders if it’s only her that can read him so easily, or if it’s that Maedhros has chosen to have less control around his mother, or if it’s that he’s usually this bad at hiding his emotions and his reputation as a good politician is just Nolofinwë being his usual ebullient self. “Abandoned you to the orcs. If I’d been just a little later- if there was less-”

“I chose to walk east,” says Nerdanel calmly. “It was a choice, Maedhros, as every last step of this has been. They had another battle to fight.”

“Another battle,” says Maedhros flatly. “What other battle?”

“They wish to return to Aman.”

Maedhros chokes. “It’s impossible!”

“Well,” says Nerdanel, unable to resist. “I’m sure  _ you’d  _ think so.”

“Mother,” says Maedhros, aghast.  _ “Mother.  _ Do you know how many died trying the same? Turgon’s people- there are- I don’t even-”

“There are things you don’t understand.”

“Then  _ explain them to me.” _

“I’d prefer not to do it until there’s more people around,” says Nerdanel loftily. She sighs when she sees the stern light in his eyes, and then reaches out, and draws Maedhros into a deeper embrace. “I love you. I love you so, so much. And I cannot tell you how glad I am that you came.”

“But you won’t answer my questions,” he says, and still sounds cold.

Nerdanel sighs again. “No,” she says. “I will not.”

He smiles tightly at her and rises to his feet. “I’ll leave you to your rest, then, Amil.”

“And sleep where?” Nerdanel lifts her brows at him, and does not flinch away when he only glares. “On the ground? This is your tent, Maitimo; I would not displace you.”

“I would displace myself,” he grinds out, confirming that she’s right in her suspicions; the poor boy’s been housing her in his own tent, after he raced west to save her from sure death.

Nerdanel snorts. “Come to bed,” she says, affectionately, and watches her son twitch, looking both angry and tired and  _ yearning,  _ like she hasn’t seen in too, too long. “No, Maitimo. Come to bed. It’s cold enough here without having to deal with the weather by ourselves. And I’d much rather spend the night holding you than being alone. We can continue our argument in the morning, if you’d wish.”

He comes, and curls around her like a cat with too many limbs, long hair tickling over Nerdanel’s own. Makalaurë would have been sulky and Tyelkormo irritable; Carnistir would’ve already spent a good few minutes shouting at Nerdanel; Curufinwë would have refused her altogether; the Ambarussa would not have argued with her in the first place.

But Maitimo- Maedhros,  _ Maedhros-  _ is tall and silent and still, like a ghost given into flesh. 

“I forgot,” he grumbles, “how frustrating you can be.”

“Frustrating!” says Nerdanel, and pulls back, so she can see his face and run a hand down his jaw, over the ropy scar. So she can cup his face, which she bore and loved, which she can touch now, again, with gentleness and kindness. “Ah, my son, you’ll have to get better at your insults- I’ve spent too long hearing worse, and grown a thicker skin for it.”

“Who’d dare to insult you to your face?” 

“Your father,” says Nerdanel dryly, and doesn’t laugh at the sudden tension in his frame, though it’s a close thing. “And, of course, Eärwen.”

“You never did like her.”

“And she never liked me. The past months were hell on Anairë, I think. Listening to our constant bickering!”

“Once,” says Maedhros, blinking at her, “you wouldn’t have cared.”

Nerdanel leans forward, and presses a kiss to Maedhros’ brow, against cool, unscarred skin. When she pulls away, he’s looking at her like she’s struck him, or done something terrible, or perhaps just found the tenderest spot in his fëa that he did not know still existed.

“I’ve learned to pay attention to more important things now,” Nerdanel tells him.

Then, safe in his arms, covered in blankets, on a soft bed, Nerdanel lets herself drift off to sleep once again.

…

She wakes first; Maedhros has twisted away from her over the night, lying flat on his stomach and snoring into his elbow. It’s a sight that Nerdanel’s seen so many times- in Tirion, lit by silver and gold, her sons curled together like so many wolfpups, content and warm- that she has to swallow thrice to dislodge the lump in her throat.

Nerdanel turns away and stalks outside.

She cannot let herself be lost to memory. She  _ will not  _ let herself be lost to memory; Nerdanel has enough burdens not to let this one weigh her spine as well.

She climbs the stone outcrop that she’d had to her back instead, ignoring the guards that cluster at the base with wary looks. Nerdanel feels almost fine- not  _ normal,  _ but her reserves are back to at least above baseline- and so is her balance, and she knows her body far, far better than any other ever can.

Who was it who bore seven sons? Who was it who crafted and caressed and grew the fëa of seven sons, each shining and true and good, in their wombs?

None of  _ them,  _ that’s for certain.

The sun’s rays are warm on her cold limbs, and the wind ruffles Nerdanel’s hair, which has dried stiff from the orc blood matted in it. Nerdanel presses her palm to her left arm, not hard. Just enough to reassure herself.

“Mother,” says Mait- Maedhros. 

Nerdanel glances down, and waves him up. Maedhros obeys; he climbs up with quick, unconscious grace, and settles next to her, a line of warmth on the cold morning.

“I know this isn’t what you’re used to,” he says hesitantly. “The bedding, I mean. And the comfort. Himring isn’t much better- it’s very cold- but there are better lands- Estolad-”

“Not what I’m used to,” murmurs Nerdanel, and lets her nails dig into her arm, feels the blood damp the cloth further and wick it to her skin, before she lets go. “If I’m unused to it, ‘tis because I’ve spent the past months sleeping on cold stone and nothing softer. A bed is more comfort than I’ve had since leaving Aman.”

Maedhros’ lips twitch. “Not even on the boat?”

“Never travel with the Teleri,” Nerdanel tells him. “They insist on  _ hammocks.” _

He laughs, the sound bursting from him like he’s surprised to hear it himself. “I’d missed you, Ammë,” he says, after a moment. 

“I missed you,” Nerdanel replies. She feels the tears prick her eyes again. “All of you.”

“I can see that you’re hurt,” Maedhros says carefully. “You’re not fine. Will you tell me what’s hurting you? If it’s something that Morgoth did- you said you were going to Angband-”

“I did go to Angband.” Nerdanel looks away from Maitimo, to the mountains in the far distance, pale purple shading into invisibility, gleaming silver in the colorless morning light. “But it is not Morgoth that hurts me, Maedhros, not now.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s your father,” says Nerdanel wearily. “Your father. That is this pain, and we cannot fix it as you wish. There’s only one thing we can do: we must go, and find your brothers, and speak to them. I’ll only say this once, and I’ll only say it to all seven of you. Together. Do you understand me?”

Maedhros slowly tilts his head. “We can go to Maglor’s home. It isn’t anything much; not a fortress, not a city- but he’ll be there.”

“I saw Vinyamar, and was not entirely impressed,” Nerdanel tells him. “I’m not one to care for the architecture; that was always Nolofinwë’s brood.”

“Fingolfin’s,” Maedhros corrects.

“I have had other things on my mind than learning another language,” says Nerdanel dryly, rising to her feet. She manages to scrape up a smile, though it feels thin and worn on her face. “How long do you estimate it to take to reach Makalaurë?”

“A week?”

“A week.” Nerdanel sways, at the harsh blow of reality, and allows herself three breaths of bone-deep apprehension before she tamps it down. “Well. The earlier we get there, the better.”

And then she’ll have to wait for the others to come, and that will be  _ another  _ week, at the least- and-

No. 

Nerdanel has faced more difficult tasks. These lies and these smokescreens she shall build, however painful, however bloody, shall be built: Nerdanel knows enough to know her own determination. She can last.

She  _ will  _ last.

…

What neither Maedhros nor Nerdanel know is that Maedhros’ six brothers are currently in Himring, trying desperately to understand what’s happened to him. There’s no threatening letters on his desk to spur him to Angband; there’s no plans for invasion or imminent danger to spur him to leave Himring; it all seems, to all of them, like their eldest brother just went-

Well.

Mad.

One morning, Maedhros woke up, and fled Himring with his forty best warriors, and still hasn’t returned.

Finally, Caranthir offers to establish an ósanwë connection. Maedhros loathes it; he has ever since Fingon’s rescue. But surely these are extenuating circumstances! 

Maglor, who’d give a lot never to have the responsibility of wrangling the five of them again, agrees immediately, and they wait with bated breath for the result.

_ I’ll come to Himring, then,  _ Maedhros replies, when Caranthir tells him what’s happening, but he sounds distracted.  _ Are all of you there? _

_ Yes,  _ says Caranthir.  _ I just told you that. _

_ Don’t leave.  _ He pauses, and for the first time in the conversation, Caranthir feels like he actually has Maedhros’ full attention.  _ Caranthir,  _ says Maedhros, and there’s a delicate, gentle warmth there that Caranthir hasn’t heard in-  _ fuck,  _ since Alqualondë. Which shouldn’t feel quite so long ago as it does.  _ Moryo. It’s not bad news. In fact, it’s- it’s the best news we’ve had in a long time. In a  _ really  _ long time. _

_ I think you should tell me what this news is,  _ Caranthir says.  _ You know how Curvo gets with surprises. _

Curufin elbows him, hard, and Caranthir takes it the breathlessness in his lungs with all the stoicism of an elder, more world-wise brother. 

_ I don’t have permission,  _ says Maedhros immediately, and then he sends a burst of warmth through their bond: the equivalent of a hug.  _ I’ll see you soon. _

“Er,” says Amrod, when Caranthir remains frozen, shocked by the abrupt slicing of their mental connection. “Permission? Who does he need permission from?” 

_ Who the hell can give Nelyo permission any longer? _

“Now it’s getting interesting,” mutters Curufin.

Maglor swallows and rises to his feet. “If there’s something more going on, we’ll have to put a stop to it. Keep your wits about you, all of you. There’s a week; we need to get ready. If he’s really been taken in by Morgoth…”

“You wouldn’t,” says Caranthir flatly.

“Stop him?” Maglor swallows again. “Yes, I would. Not  _ kill  _ him. But- better we deal with it quietly. Send your people away, if you came with a retinue.” He eyes Caranthir until Caranthir acquiesces with an impatient jerk of his head. “And make any arrangements for an extended stay in Himring; it looks like we’ll need to keep an eye on our brother.”

“You,” says Curufin sweetly, leaning forward, “are not king, Kanafinwe.”

Maglor’s face pales, but his shoulders are set in the same angles as their mother’s would have been: immovable as stone. Immovable as those that  _ make  _ stone move.

“I do not need to be king to know sense,” he says coolly. “And I do not need to be king to know that if our  _ brother  _ is hurt, you will not stop at anything to keep him safe.” Maglor’s lips thin into blades of white against his face. “Do not question me again, Curufinwë. This is the time to stand together, not apart. Or would you have Fingon save Maedhros again, while we languish in comfort and snow?”

It’s a good blow, swiftly delivered and ruthlessly administered, and Curufin takes it with his usual response to irritating brothers- flushed cheeks, downturned eyes, pursed lips.

And silence, which is always a good thing.

“Any other questions?”

Celegorm exhales noisily. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“To get Nelyo back to himself?” Maglor shrugs very evocatively, in that manner that only singers or trained performers can deliver. “Let’s say a month, and work from there. And, Celegorm?”

“Yes?”

“We are  _ together,  _ in this.”

He doesn’t say it as a question, but they all know it needs an answer. For a long moment, Caranthir waits, breathless, for Celegorm’s response; if he decides to support Curufin, then Caranthir’s going to support Maglor, and the twins are likely going to come to his side but it’s not  _ absolute,  _ and that means they’ll need to confine those two as well and only then-

Caranthir’s plans screech to a halt as Celegorm nods impatiently. 

“Yes,” he says. “Of course we are.”

…

Nerdanel starts singing to herself the moment that Himring comes into view, blurring out of sight and attention of those surrounding her. She can’t help it; the anxiety feeds the energy in her veins, and the jittery feeling of that is so inextricable from her anxiety that it’s not helping her control. Singing, little though it might be related to Nerdanel’s craft, is the easiest way of bleeding some of the energy off.

Which is why nobody sees her when she finally enters her son’s fortress.

Then Nerdanel sees her sons- they’re arrayed in the courtyard, though not all of them- and the shock of seeing their narrow, worn faces jolts her out of the song, enough for their gaze to fall on her.

Makalaurë, who’d started forward to greet Maedhros, stumbles to a dead halt. Someone chokes behind him, loud enough for Nerdanel to hear. Curufinwë, Nerdanel sees, has drawn a short sword, looking pale and wild-eyed.

_ I  _ told  _ you he was not ready to bear a sword,  _ Nerdanel imagines telling Fëanáro, and the utter familiarity of that argument is enough to make her smile at her sons.  _ Give it to him early enough and he’ll start thinking he can solve all his problems by waving steel at it. Manwë knows you do it enough without that excuse; Eru knows he’ll be worse. _

“It’s good to see you again,” she says aloud.

“Ammë,” breathes Makalaurë. Then, louder,  _ “Ammë-” _

But before he can start towards her, Curufinwë drags him back, with a bruising grip. “Stay back,” he snarls. “Don’t-”

Nerdanel holds up her hands, ignoring the pain shooting down her left arm in favor of watching her son. “It’s been a long time, Curufinwë.”

“I don’t know who you are,” he hisses back at her. “I don’t know who you  _ think  _ you are!”

“Has your memory really gotten that bad?” asks Nerdanel.

_ “Don’t,”  _ says Maedhros through gritted teeth, “provoke him.”

“I’ll do what I wish,” says Nerdanel haughtily, before pinning Curufinwë with a look that’s not precisely a glare.

Her  _ moronic  _ son keeps talking in Sindarin, like she can understand him. Like she’ll bother to pay attention to him.

“A trick,” she thinks he says, “by fucking  _ Morgoth-” _

“Oh, talk in Quenya,” she snaps back to him. “And use some of that intellect your father apparently gave you, Curufinwë. Do you really think that Morgoth would- what? I don’t even know what you think this trick is supposed to be!- lend my appearance to some poor elf?”

“Try to silence us- try to- to- frighten us into-”

“Quenya,” says Nerdanel loudly, before rolling her eyes at Maedhros. “Oh, stop glaring at me. I cannot understand him- it’s not my fault that he talks so quickly.”

“It’s the diplomacy you’re trampling into the ground that worries me,” Maedhros mutters back to her.

Nerdanel barely stops herself from rolling her eyes again. “I’ll learn Sindarin as soon as I stop having the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I’m sure that unless I go to Elwë’s court and start screaming in Quenya, he won’t hold me talking to  _ my sons  _ against me, yes?”

Maedhros has a look on his face like he’s unsure of that statement, but also doesn’t want to get called further into the discussion. 

“Perhaps,” says Makalaurë in a welcome distraction, leaning on Curufinwë with a heavy hand- Nerdanel suspects it’s to keep Curufinwë’s blade lowered, as much for support for himself, “we can continue this inside?”

“Yes,” says Nerdanel pleasantly, and ignores Maedhros’ suspicious look. He might well feel strongly about that; she certainly hasn’t been very open to him over this week. “I’m sure you have many questions.”

…

Inside, they walk to a councilroom. There’s a nice table there, and Nerdanel seats herself swiftly so she’s getting the sun on her back; she’s too cold nowadays, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Better she has every advantage that she can get.

The others spill inside quickly after that, staring at her like she’s a ghost. 

Well. Nerdanel can understand that. Of course they must not have so much as dreamt that they’d see her ever again; not in this life, certainly. 

She takes the initial shocked silence to study them as much as she can: Makalaurë’s hair is shorter, and not done in full braids any longer; Tyelkormo’s face has a few scars like he’s thrown himself into a thicket of thorns and didn’t come out the victor; Carnistir stands prouder than she’s seen him since he returned from a clerkship in Vanyamar; Curufinwë, beneath his anger, looks like the richer air of Beleriand suits him more than Aman; the Ambarussa are quieter and stiller now, grown into themselves, watching her with careful eyes.

“Your hair,” says Umbarto suddenly. 

Nerdanel reaches up to finger a strand of it, grimacing. The others drift a little closer, and Nerdanel considers being concerned by the vaguely threatening air of it before dismissing it out of hand. These are her  _ sons,  _ Valar damn it all. She’ll not be afraid of them if it kills her.

“I know,” she says aloud. “It really doesn’t suit me at all, does it?”

“What did you do?” asks Makalaurë.

“I dyed it,” says Nerdanel. “Why, did you think it changed color on its own?”

Carnistir’s lips thin. “We heard rumors.”

“Of  _ who?” _

“Indis.”

“Grandmother Indis,” says Maedhros, before Nerdanel can correct him. When they all gawk at him and Nerdanel sits back, satisfied, he sighs. “She is… very concerned about proper titles.”

“Familial titles,” corrects Nerdanel. Then she turns back to Carnistir. “What rumors?”

“That her hair went white with grief,” says Curufinwë flatly.

Nerdanel snorts. “That might well have been a greater tragedy to everyone in Vanyamar than all else that happened,” she replies. “And we should all be glad that it didn’t happen, lest their wails deafen all of Aman. No, her hair didn’t change. And neither did mine, as it goes; I dyed it to keep a… lower profile. I certainly didn’t want rumors of three elleths running around Beleriand with silver and red and black hair.”

“Three elleths?” asks Tyelkormo.

“Anairë, Eärwen and I.”

The meeting fractures from there into smaller groups- Makalaurë’s speaking very quietly and very quickly to Maedhros; Carnistir, Tyelkormo and Curufinwë are interrogating her incredulously; the Ambarussa are going back and forth between both groups, and also discussing amongst themselves. They all sound so…

“And she’s…” whispers Makalaurë, barely audible in a lull in the conversation.

“Our mother,” says Maedhros firmly. “She’s a bit- ah- deranged. But she’s definitely our mother.”

Nerdanel leans forwards, catching his eye. “Deranged?”

Makalaurë flushes. “Ammë,” he says. “We just-”

“No, no,” says Nerdanel, enjoying herself. “Please, go ahead. I’d like to hear the ending.”

“You were saying that you were going to go into Angband,” says Maedhros, louder, now that everyone’s watching him. “Leave aside that it’s patently untrue-”

_ “-is  _ it, though-”

“-but you’re clearly outside of Angband now, and alone, and-” he shakes his head, before turning to his brothers. “You should have seen her when I rode there: horseless, weaponless, she had three orcs holding her arms and she was managing to crush two of their kneecaps with her  _ feet.  _ Ammë, you looked like you were going mad.”

“And I told you that it wasn’t Angband that drove me mad,” says Nerdanel serenely. 

“You cannot blame our father for everything!” he explodes.

Nerdanel looks at him, and sees the hand that he presses flat against the table, hard enough to keep it from shaking. The others all fall silent; they look a little stunned. Maedhros himself is pale, but he keeps his eyes locked on hers, a mutinous kind of defiance in them.

“Fine,” she says, and lets the levity fade from her voice. “Fine. You’re right; there has been enough dancing around the truth. But if you think I didn’t tell you the truth of Angband- well, there’s only one way to convince you, isn’t there? I’ll have to show you.”

“Show us,” says Curufinwë, voice still flat as a sheared field of wheat. “Show us what?”

Nerdanel inclines her head. “Do me a favor.”

“You- we-” Caranthir sounds strangely choked. “We don’t-”

“-trust me? Yes, I understand.” 

Irritating though it is, Nerdanel does understand. 

And irritating it must be, because otherwise it will become hurtful; and Nerdanel cannot bear to think of her hurt now, when it all feels like a dense stone in her belly. She has enough stones in her bones. 

“It is nothing much that I ask for,” says Nerdanel calmly. “Go to the other side of the room: at the door. And whatever you see- whatever I do- you will not stop me. You will not call for your guards.  _ You will not stop me.” _

They pause. Then Umbarto asks, “If we do interfere?”

“Then I will die,” Nerdanel tells him. She rolls her eyes at Maedhros’ alarmed look. “Not immediately. But it will have to be done eventually, and it is painful enough that I’d rather it be done now than later. And if you interfere, the chances of me dying becomes… much higher. I know what I am doing; I do not think you do. Not unless one of has chosen a mastery in healing over this past century?”

Maedhros is the first to step back. The others follow him slowly, retreating to the door; Makalaurë is the last, and he steps towards Nerdanel. 

“Please,” he says, and his eyes are shining things, bright and brilliant as Telperion ever was. “If you die now- after-”

“I will not die,” Nerdanel tells him, and doesn’t quite dare to press a hand to his shoulder. 

But oh,  _ oh,  _ how her throat  _ aches,  _ and how she wishes she could throw herself into his arms, how she wishes they could trust her-

No. She’s so close. She’s almost done. 

She can do this.

“Do you remember my pack, Maedhros? The one that holds tokens and letters for your cousins?”

Maedhros swallows. “Yes,” he says.

“Did you look into it?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you find?”

“Letters. A few- other things.”

“Mmm.” Nerdanel nods. “I thought you might search there. And this- this is something that ought to be given to all seven of you equally; never to one more than the other, as you were all your father’s sons, as you were all loved, equally, and without greater favor or less. I would not have shown it to you if you were not accompanied by all of the others.”

“Ammë,” says Ambarussa. He wavers, a little, expression not quite so harsh as his brothers’. “What are you saying?”

“Watch,” says Nerdanel softly.

She lets the knife jammed up her sleeve- the last knife, the one that she hasn’t removed since the evening after leaving Anairë and Eärwen, slip into her palm. It’s not much of a knife, but it’s wickedly sharp and, above all else, clean. Maedhros jumps at the sight- there’s a reason why Nerdanel hasn’t removed her shirt in this past week, and it’s not only because she had no other clothes- and the others flinch.

Nerdanel presses it to the inside of her elbow, then pushes down.

Carnistir makes a sharp sound and strides forwards, but Nerdanel only glances up once and he stops, stricken. Tyelkormo gets farther; he grasps her wrist, ringing it in his fingers and effectively stopping her from moving, though he doesn’t allow his touch to alter the motion of her hand.

“Ammë,” he whispers. “Whatever this is-”

“-it’s necessary,” finishes Nerdanel. “I know my own hröa, Tyelkormo. Now remove your hand. If I faint, you may heal me. Otherwise step  _ back.” _

She waits until he lets go, and then continues opening up her own skin. She hears the catch in Tyelkormo’s throat when he realizes that she’s not just randomly slicing at it; there’s knotted thread there, holding her flesh together. 

Nerdanel hums a light song of healing- not enough to do anything other than dull the pain and slow the bloodflow- and focuses beyond everything else on extracting the gems she’d stuck inside of her arm the evening after leaving Eärwen and Anairë. It’s a delicate process, even more than when she first did it; then, Nerdanel had focused on shoving the gems in and then hiding the evidence as best as she could, but now she has to ensure the severed nerves and blood vessels all grow back as soon as she gets the jewels out.

Someone- Nerdanel thinks it’s Curufinwë- makes a ragged, pained sound when she nicks a proper artery and fresh blood gushes out. Nerdanel drowns it out and  _ focuses-  _ there, a little to the left, get the leverage and  _ flip- _

One jewel drops onto the council table, followed swiftly by the other.

The Silmarils are pink, shining white even through the slick of Nerdanel’s blood. She glances up once- to take in her sons’ faces, which range from surprise to confusion to shock to awe to disbelief- before focusing again on her healing. 

It’s a relief more than anything, the Silmarils being gone from her. 

When she’d first embedded them into her arm, Nerdanel had needed a method of keeping them safe that wasn’t just shoving them in her pack. She hadn’t had another person to keep watch as she slept; and Nerdanel was too damned tired  _ not  _ to sleep. The Silmarils gave her energy. Even when Nerdanel herself felt scraped thin, they gave her energy to go a little bit further, a little bit faster. They’d saved her life. She knows this. 

But when she had enough energy and had to appear normal in front of Maedhros, they lent her too  _ much. _

For a week now, Nerdanel’s felt like she was going to vibrate out of her skin. 

The pain in her arm now grounds her. It’s only after she’s sung the skin back- it’ll be raw and inflamed for a few more days, but Nerdanel’s no healer so she’ll take functionality over the looks that most other elves prize- that Nerdanel allows herself to sit down once more, and look at her sons.

None of them have moved.

“Well,” says Nerdanel. Her voice shakes a little, but that could be for the pain in her arm as much as the pain in her throat and lungs and heart. “They say that the longer the separation, the finer the gifts that ought to be given. I do hope you have something to match for the Silmarils.”

“I,” says Maedhros.  _ “How?” _

Nerdanel reaches out and rubs a glob of blood off the jewel’s surface, until it shines through even whiter and brighter. Makalaurë’s jaw is hanging open, quite unattractively, though she supposes she can give him a pass this once; there’s only family around, and if he’d been convinced of Nerdanel’s  _ derangement- _

“It’s a long story,” she says. “A very long one. And there are things I cannot tell you, because of the choices that we’ve made. That is to say, I will not tell you the how of it.”

“Why?” asks Carnistir.

“Because it would be a lie, and I’ve not enough blood in my veins right now to lie properly.”

Tyelkormo’s hand closes over her shoulder, and he runs a gentle hand over her forearm, ignoring the blood to touch the skin. She can feel his fëa trying to examine it, and she lets herself relax into his touch and the warmth of his skin.

Curufinwë’s still staring at the gems; he hasn’t looked away. 

“So,” says Nerdanel, glancing over the table to look at Maedhros, “when I say that I walked into Angband, I was not  _ lying.” _

“I can see that,” says Maedhros, before he collapses into a chair. “I don’t- how? Why? You didn’t tell me- when you were-”

“-of the Silmarils? Of course not.” Nerdanel sighs as Tyelkormo’s healing takes hold, and the pain fades into a cool kind of numbness. “Eärwen did, though, so you might hear something from Dorthonion, if you haven’t already. We had to choose what to do after- what happened in Angband.”

_ “What happened in Angband?” _

Carnistir’s face flushes, but he doesn’t flinch; just glares furiously at the table, not looking Nerdanel in the eye. 

“We defeated Morgoth,” says Nerdanel plainly. “We stole the Silmarils from him, Eärwen and Anairë and I, and then watched Angband burn.”

Well. They’d set  _ fire  _ to Angband, if she’s being specific, but Nerdanel’s fairly certain that’s one of those pesky details that Anairë’s going to leverage for all that she’s worth. 

“You,” says Tyelkormo, voice so loud and close to her ear that Nerdanel flinches away. “You- you  _ just-  _ what the  _ fuck-” _

“We’ve stood watch for a hundred years and you just waltzed  _ inside,”  _ says Makalaurë.

Nerdanel threads her fingers through Tyelkormo’s hands and tightens her grip until he winces and settles down, though there’s still hectic spots of red high on his cheeks. “You should have thought of a better strategy, really,” she says, calm enough and cold enough to silence all seven of them. “Even if you hadn’t thought of it before- Findekáno’s rescue of Maedhros should have changed your approach. We cannot defeat Morgoth on scale or power or strength. But trickery and guile is not beyond us, and all seven of you have the blood of creativity running through you.” She smiles at Carnistir, and he smiles back reflexively before it freezes on his face. “Though it helped us, in the end. Morgoth watched you with great fervor, and never noticed the three elleths that snuck in to defeat him.”

“So we were a distraction,” says Tyelkormo, and Nerdanel turns to him, smiles, again, helplessly and wide as a sunrise.

“What a good distraction it was!” she exclaims, and then leans forwards and butts her face against his shoulder, smothering the laugh that threatens to rise up. “We could not have achieved it if you’d already sent people into his domain. If he was already watchful- we wouldn’t have been able to stop him at all, and in the end that is what matters, yes?”

“Stop him,” says Curufinwë quietly.

He doesn’t lilt it like a question, but it’s clearly not just a statement.

Nerdanel leans forwards, contorting herself across the table so she’s extending a hand to Curufinwë even as she doesn’t let go of Tyelkormo. “Do you have my pack?”

“Yes,” says Maedhros, and lifts it.

“Open it.”

He empties it out onto the table. Many things fall: little stones, feathers, beads and jewels. A packet of letters, neatly labelled. A braid of hair, white as polished silver and speckled with bits of dye like tarnish. And a rusting, heavy circlet, with three empty indents.

“Is that…”

“Yes,” Nerdanel answers Umbarto’s half-formed question. “Morgoth’s crown.”

“How’d you get it?” breathes Makalaurë.

Nerdanel lifts a shoulder. “Anairë shot an arrow that knocked it off his head.”

_ “No,”  _ says Carnistir.

“Ammë,” says Curufinwë, and takes her hand. He’s shaking faintly; he’s gone completely white. Nerdanel lets her thumb run over the side of his wrist as comfortingly as she knows. “This is- this is  _ everything.  _ Everything our father would have-”

_ “-don’t,”  _ says Maedhros, sharply, but the damage is done.

Nerdanel rises from her chair to make her way to Curufinwë, ignoring Tyelkormo’s hand on her waist or Maedhros’ entreaties. On the way, she considers all the emotions in her chest: the anger, the hurt, the grief, the love, the pity. She still hasn't decided which one will take precedence when she kneels before Curufinwë, but then she looks up into his eyes and there is nothing else that she can do, not as a mother: Nerdanel cups his face in her palms, her thumbs on the apples of his cheeks, her palms resting in the hollows. 

“Loved?” asks Nerdanel gently. “Oh, Curufinwë. If this is the measure of your father’s life and works, it is a pitiable measure indeed. There have been greater acts of courage that Arda has seen, and greater acts of creativity as well. If these gems were my own, I would cast them into flame for the pain that they’ve brought to my family.”

“But they are not,” he whispers. “They are not, because  _ you left us.” _

Nerdanel leans forwards, so she’s pressing her face to his knees, and she can bow her shoulders, let the misery and hurt swamp her for a long moment. “And so we come to it,” she says.

“You left,” says Curufinwë, and his voice doesn’t go higher with his anger but rather lower; colder, and harder, like the jutting spires of ice that Angarato had shown them of the Helcaraxë. “You walked away, and then you didn’t come back, and you told us that we’d deserve every grief heaped on our heads, and then you do  _ this?  _ How dare you. How dare you!”

“Because I love you,” says Nerdanel wearily. She leans back on her heels and looks up at him. “Do you think anger can take that love away? I was wrong to curse you. I was wrong. Is that what you wish me to say? I will say it now and a hundred times more: I was wrong. I knew I was wrong the moment my very fëa felt a wound like a whip across it and I heard of Maitimo’s capture.”

Someone inhales very loudly, and Nerdanel turns to look at Maedhros. She does not know what her face looks like, but she does not look away from her first son, the child that brought her this far, the child whose pain has driven her to destroy the very foundations of their world. And Maedhros looks back at her steadily, something cracking away across his face like a mask falling to pieces: some old, old fear driven back into the shadows from which it came.

“You were there,” he says lowly. “It wasn’t- I thought maybe it had been my imagination. My… dreams.”

“I wish I could have been there more often,” Nerdanel tells him.

His jaw trembles before he clenches it. Makalaurë places a hand on his shoulder, tugs him into his chest, and Nerdanel turns back to Curufinwë, satisfied that he isn’t alone.

“I could not imagine what those words ever meant,” Nerdanel says. “I had no understanding of that kind of cruelty or darkness. And, yes, Curufinwë, if the price of your flight from Aman had been separation alone, I would not have come. But it was not, was it? It was death and darkness and torture and pain, unending and unfathomable. If what you thought would happen- if the bargain you thought you were making- was held truly, I would have remained in Aman. But it was not. And I would not have abandoned any of you to that cruelty no matter what words I’d said.”

He looks down at her, with those eyes that look so similar to Fëanáro’s, and he says, “So you don’t regret leaving us.”

“I have said I was wrong.” Nerdanel shrugs, exaggerated. “But I think you were wrong, as well.”

“To do what? To seek vengeance?”

Nerdanel’s lips twist. “To be so stupid in seeking vengeance, yes.”

“If you’re so smart and successful,” says Umbarto, carefully, “then where’s the third Silmaril?”

“With Anairë and Eärwen,” replies Nerdanel, though she doesn’t look away from Curufinwë. “On its way to Aman, because what happened to Morgoth is… temporary. And novel. None of us know how long it will hold him. The official story- the one I will be telling your uncle and anyone else- is that a jealous Maia was prodded by our songs into acting, and we used the confusion to take the Silmarils and escape. To the seven of you, I say that it is a lie, but it is a lie you well let be, because there are other things that must be bargained for with the truth. Do you understand me?”

“That Silmaril is ours,” says Curufinwë quietly.

“And I would not keep it from you.” Nerdanel breathes in slowly, then out just as slowly. “It’s being used to lead your aunts back to Aman. As a key, and not a bargaining chip; that’s what I agreed to with Anairë when she left, and if nothing else, she holds to her promises. They will be back within twenty years.”

“Twenty  _ years,” _ whispers Curufinwë.

He raises a hand to his cheek. Presses against the thin trail of tears there, and looks at the shine on his fingertips wonderingly. Nerdanel reaches up and places one hand on his other cheek, warm. She feels something in her own chest give way when he curls into it, and then launches himself forwards to embrace her so tightly some of the stitches in her arm give way. 

“I don’t know,” he says. Then, again and again, into her ear: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t  _ know-” _

“Yes,” Nerdanel whispers back. She feels someone else come from behind, and suddenly she’s sandwiched between two sons, and then there are others, at her side, in front and behind and to her sides, plastering themselves over her with tears and laughter and murmured, wordless sounds of comfort, and she clutches as many of them as close to her as she can.

“Yes,” says Nerdanel, and doesn’t know if any of them can even hear her, but it doesn’t  _ matter,  _ because: “Yes. I know, my boys. We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure this out together.”

_ Together,  _ she thinks, and has never felt stronger.

…

…

They take off from Mount Taras within three months of leaving Angband. It’s a quick journey, made quicker by the fact that everyone’s very, very confused. There aren’t many orcs around; those that are remain disorganized and- while vicious enough in small groups- a rapidly decreasing population through the mountains.

Eärwen’s starting to worry about Anairë, though.

She’s been so focused on defeating Morgoth that she hadn’t focused on the aftermath; and an Anairë with a goal but no plan is an Anairë obsessed with creating a plan. 

An obsessed Anairë is not a healthy Anairë.

“We’ll manage,” Eärwen tells her once.

Anairë’s face goes rigid as marble. “No,” she says. “We won’t. Can’t you see? The things we’re planning to do… the Valar will never forgive us. We must rely on so much. I need- leverage. More leverage. And I’m trying to create leverage out of thin air like it’s something that’s possible!”

“You need to think about this.” Eärwen tugs the sail around, so they’re on a straighter course, and drops down to touch Anairë’s shoulder. “Not panic.” 

“I need Nerdanel,” says Anairë hopelessly, burying her face in her hands. “I need her. We pushed each other onwards when it came down to it- when we were afraid- and now I’m here alone- and it’s too  _ much-” _

“You have me,” murmurs Eärwen. “And you know that we shall do what must be done. Fear did not stop us then; it will not stop us now. You have me, Anairë. Let me help you.”

Slowly, slowly, Anairë looks up at her. There are tears in her eyes.

“I’ve been so unkind to you,” she whispers. “I- I was so  _ angry,  _ and then I- I hurt you. I blamed you. It was easy and it was simple, but it was so unfair to you- and- and-” she shakes her head, dropping it to slot against Eärwen’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

“I wouldn’t have come if not for you,” says Eärwen calmly. “I wouldn’t have been able to save my children if not for you. That is not something to apologize for.”

“But my anger is.”

“I won’t deny that,” says Eärwen, and pulls away so she can smile at Anairë, so the sting of her words can be lessened by the warmth of her face. “I love you, Anairë. I always have. Do you remember when they all left Aman? I held you back because I could not bear to lose you, too, after everyone else had disappeared. I could not have borne it. Not at all.”

“I’m glad you did it,” says Anairë. Eärwen frowns at her, and she smiles, thin and small. “I am. If I had followed Nolofinwë, I would not have known what I’m capable of. It was a terrible thing to do; but I cannot deny that I chose to stay as well. Nolofinwë didn’t come to me, but I didn’t chase after him either.” She swallows, and trembles, but continues still. “I cannot blame you for my own failures. Not any longer.”

Eärwen tips her forehead against Anairë’s, and feels her warmth, feels her strength, like the roaring surge of an underground river: unexpected but unmistakable. 

“Then let us forgive each other,” she says. “And let us do this, Anairë, this last thing: let us do it properly and goodly, and win what can be won!”

…

There is a story that Eärwen heard while in Endórë but not after reaching Aman, one that she hasn’t heard in all the ages since: of two stars that orbit one another, one white and small and dim and the other fair and gold and shining, never touching, forever dancing. The golden one loves the white star, and forever reaches out, forever offers more and more and more, until the white one takes on too much. The white star loves the golden one, and forever accepts, until the gold offers too much.

The white star explodes, too fierce, too heavy, too  _ much.  _ In the process, it kills the gold star, and all the stars around it, and does not even have the time to mourn.

This is a story told in a world before the elves knew Valar existed, before they knew what Maia were. It is a story of the dangers of love: of its consuming nature. There is no blame to be assigned, for the gold offered and the white took; not unless the blame is to both the gold and the white; but how can you blame someone for being in love? In a world of danger and grief and darkness, love all-consuming is as killing as a blade and the freezing winter.

Eärwen has never loved Arafinwë with the love of someone all-consuming. She does not think she loves Anairë that way, either, but-

But.

…

There are things that Eärwen will do for Anairë that she will never even consider for anyone else.

…

When they land in Aman, Eärwen swings off the boat to meet her father.

“Father,” she says quietly.

“King Olwë,” corrects her mother. There is a high flush on her cheeks: anger, raw as the sun’s rays. “You are not our daughter any longer.”

“No?” asks Eärwen. She steps forwards, head held high.

This is what Nerdanel will never understand of her: Eärwen has her own pride, and it is as unbending as adamant in her spine. Just because Eärwen does not scream to the stars for that pride, just because Eärwen does not fight and bleed and die for it does not mean it does not exist.

It is not anger that propels Eärwen forward, but it is pride. The pride of her people, the pride of her actions, the pride of her love. She will not be punished for doing the right thing. Not here, not now, not like this.

“Who buried our people, then?” she asks. “Who buried our brothers and wept for their deaths? Who organized the crops of a world without the Trees when you were lost to your grief? Who washed the blood from these sands with their own two hands?” Eärwen does not look away from her mother. “I am the princess of the Teleri, and I shall be such until my dying day. I am your daughter, and I have done what needs to be done because of it.”

“You defied the Valar,” says Olwë. 

“For my  _ children,”  _ replies Eärwen. “Of course I did. Of course I would, again and again. There is no law and no hate and no strife that could keep me from them.”

“Not even their own actions?” asks her mother.

Eärwen looks up at the stars, then back to her mother: her mother named Hyanda, named for the blades she’d once forged in Endórë to keep herself and her people alive, her mother, who’s ever been as sharp as steel and twice as cutting.

“If my brothers could return to you tomorrow, would you not do anything as well?”

“Not if it means killing people!”

“And who have we slain?” asks Anairë, stepping off the boat and matching Eärwen. In her hand is the Silmaril, and it shines so bright on the beach that all those gathered recoil in shock and terror. Hyanda and Olwë stare at it, disbelieving. “The thralls of Angamando, yes; we could not save them. I’ve been compiling lists of their names as we knew, but there was nothing we could have done to save them. And we have not hurt any other elf. Not any other being that did not try to kill us first. Tell me, Queen Hyanda: would you blame us for slaying orcs and balrogs? For trying to stop Morgoth himself?”

“I,” says Hyanda, face white. She’s never taken well to people proving her wrong, or being cornered, either physically or verbally. “I would not- I would not blame you for anything other than pride.”

Anairë’s face softens a little. “Is pride enough to disown your daughter, when you have raised her to be a daughter of kings? When she is your own heir?”

Before Hyanda can answer, Olwë speaks.

“Where did you get that?” he asks. 

“Morgoth’s own crown,” replies Eärwen. 

People gasp. Olwë’s face lifts to the horizon, as if looking for a storm of flame and fury to accompany them.

“He will not be following,” says Anairë flatly. “We ensured that. Even now, Nerdanel is in Beleriand with the two other jewels, providing distraction and explanation to my husband and his people.”

“You should have stayed there,” says Hyanda.

“Did you think I returned for you?” Eärwen returns, and takes no pleasure in the subtle, miserable flinch of her mother’s shoulders. “We came to speak to the Valar. There are things that must be done. If you could give us horses, it will aid us in leaving Alqualondë all the faster.”

Hyanda’s face tightens. “After everything you’ve done- after  _ leaving- _ after-”

“Very well,” says Olwë wearily, and they both turn to him, surprised. He’s always left matters of family up to his wife; but then, Eärwen supposes that this is a matter of both family and state. “I wish to hear what you shall say to the Valar as well. Bring us horses! We ride to Máhanaxar tonight!”

No offer of food or rest. Her father’s got his own methods of showing anger, and while quieter than her mother’s, Eärwen knows them to be just as effective. 

Well, it matters not; Eärwen worries more for her reunion with Arafinwë, not her parents. Their reactions she’s been able to guess, but not her husband’s. And she has a feeling that locking him in her rooms after knocking him out had not been… the most diplomatic way of handling the situation.

Oh, who is Eärwen fooling?

She’d panicked, and now she must deal with the consequences. It won’t be easy. Of course it won’t be easy. 

She can only hope that their arguments- they’ll be private.

…

Arafinwë rides out to meet them when they’re close to Tirion, golden hair whipping behind him. When he sees Anairë and the Silmaril, his horse goes still for the briefest of moments. Then he spurs his horse into a gallop, into a sprint, and blows past Olwë and Anairë and everyone else to stop in front of her.

Eärwen’s throat hurts. “Husband,” she manages to force out.

His eyes are golden and shining, like the sun at dawn. Like the sun that had lit the sky the morning after defeating Morgoth: clean and fresh and beautiful. 

_ “Wife,” _ he says, and in full view of her parents, of his city, Arafinwë bends forward in his saddle and kisses Eärwen.

…

Later, she asks him how he could forgive her.

_ You forgave me for being imperfect,  _ he says, in their tent, hands so warm on her own.  _ Once, when I did more terrible things: when I thought to overlook terrible actions. How could I not search for that same forgiveness in my own heart? _

_ You cannot forgive me simple because I forgave you! _

_ No,  _ says Arafinwë, with terrible, terrible gentleness.  _ Understand me: I do not forgive you because you forgave me. I forgive you because you showed me that it is  _ possible  _ to forgive unforgivable actions. _

…

The Valar await them at the Ring of Doom. 

It’s Anairë that insists on everyone but for the kings to leave. Eärwen lets her; it makes sense for Anairë to take the brunt of the dislike, particularly when she’s got everyone in her family already in Beleriand. Eärwen’s role here is to be the diplomat, made even easier by the truth that she  _ wants  _ to be more diplomatic than Anairë’s instincts.

“Manwë Sulimo,” says Eärwen, kneeling and bowing her head. “We come to beg you for aid.”

“Aid,” says Namo derisively. “You, who have violated our words and every decree?”

“One decree,” says Anairë coolly. “Your own Doom, my lord. But we are not the only ones who broke it: you did, as well, in allowing Eärwen and I to return.”

“You would rather we have left you to the sea?”

“No,” says Eärwen hastily, sending a sharp look to Anairë. Yes, fine, Anairë’s angry, and she  _ should  _ show that anger, but there is also such a thing as too much. “But we come to ask for aid. For Morgoth is stopped and held in chains of flame: but we do not know for how long such chains shall last, and we have no desire to watch his fury overtake all of Beleriand.”

“Is this why you are here?” asks Varda. “To ask for our aid? Or to take it from us?”

“We would wish for it to be given,” says Eärwen slowly. “We would wish for this to be done by free will on all sides.”

“And if it is not?” says Varda.

Eärwen looks up at her. “Then we shall try our best to get it,” she says quietly. “With whatever tools we have at our disposal. We left behind our children, Varda Elentári. I did not even get to see them. What we have sacrificed to leave Aman, and then to return-” she shakes her head. “You blame Anairë,” Eärwen tells them. “I can see it in your eyes: you blame her for her actions. But she has lost a child. Her youngest son, the youngest of all of Finwë’s grandchildren- dead,  _ dead,  _ and it was a death caused by Morgoth’s own armies.”

“They made their choices,” says Varda.

“A choice made with a sword to one’s throat is not a choice,” replies Anairë. She swallows, and her eyes are bright as melting, shining silver as she looks up at the queen. “A choice made in foolishness and despair, without knowing what those choices would bring- that is not a choice either. My son is dead. And it is for love of those left behind that I come here. To ask- and yes, to beg, if you ask it- for aid. To stop Morgoth.”

“How is it our responsibility?” says Vána. She tosses her hair back, then continues in a voice that whistles oddly, like a spring wind. “He is in Endórë. Not Aman.”

“He is your king’s brother,” Eärwen replies, a little reproachfully.

“And yet,” says Tulkas, “you ask our king to kill his brother.”

So.

For as much as Eärwen and Anairë had planned this, clearly the Valar know how to ambush a person as well. Or at least use their strengths: Vána’s innocence, Tulkas’ brashness, Varda’s arrogance. Eärwen pauses, and Anairë takes up the argument without missing a beat.

“Not kill,” says Anairë. “Imprison. We have not come here to ask for the impossible, my lord.”

“No,” says Manwë, speaking for the first time. “Though it seems that you have done the impossible yourself. Tell me, how did you defeat my brother, when even I would have had such difficulty?”

Eärwen turns to Anairë, who bites her lip and stands straighter, glancing around her: Ingwe and Arafinwë and Olwë are all clustered near to the door, listening intently. There are Maia hanging around them all, flickering over Varda’s head and fluttering over Vaire’s robes. 

“Well,” says Anairë. “It went something like this…”

…

They stay for a full moon’s turn in the end, bargaining and yanking diplomacy out of people that don’t particularly want to be diplomatic or helpful. Eärwen learns to be patient even when she wants nothing more than to scream; Anairë, she learns, for all her snappishness and general air of irritability, has an endless store of patience with regards to the actual minutiae of crafting treaties. 

On the day that they finally sign off on it, Eärwen thinks she’ll dance a  _ jig,  _ she’s that relieved.

“Up,” says Anairë, when she sees Eärwen slumped against a wall. “We have to go.”

“Go,” says Eärwen flatly. “Go where?”

“To convince your father to convey us all across the Belegaer.” Her lips twitch, taking in Eärwen’s dismay. “Yes, yes. Whoever said that being a queen would be easy has always been very wrong.”

“I  _ hate  _ you,” Eärwen groans, and rises, and lets Anairë usher her out of Máhanaxar and east, towards Tirion, towards Alqualondë, towards Beleriand.

…

Just before reaching Alqualondë, Eärwen tells Anairë, “Let me speak to my father.”

“Are you certain?” she asks.

Eärwen thinks of everything that she’s done. She thinks of Anairë’s determination and Nerdanel’s stubbornness, and she thinks of the willpower it had taken her to resist Morgoth’s freezing spell, the will and the grit that Eärwen’s held in her spine since she was born. It is not anger in her veins; it is not pride.

It is love.

Everything that they’ve given to this mission shall not be made in vain because of her father’s bullishness.

“Yes,” says Eärwen. “There are some truths that must be made clear here.”

…

She does not want to do this. Eärwen thinks that must be made clear, at least in her own head: she hates doing this. She loves her parents. She always has. Thinking that they do not love her- thinking that she’s been disowned- is a cold, terrible hollow in her chest.

But Eärwen is a mother herself, now, and has more things to fight for than just the love her parents bear for her.

“Father,” she says. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“A favor,” says Olwë. “A  _ favor?  _ You come here, after everything that you’ve done, and wish to ask for a favor?”

“Yes,” says Eärwen.

“Have you no shame?”

“No,” says Eärwen, turning to her mother. “But I know that you do. Which is why I’m here, by myself, and not with Anairë, and not with anyone else. This is a conversation between the three of us.”

Her hair is braided as she’d done when walking into Angband: braided high and thick over her temples, then loosing into free streams of silver just below her shoulders. The Eldar had worn these braids on hunts and in danger and in times of battle. Eärwen had thought before walking into her father’s rooms:  _ This is not the least of the battles I’ve fought over the past months,  _ and she’d then braided beads of silver and stone flecked blue and green into her hair. Blue for her own eyes, and green for the flecks in Findaráto’s eyes, for the courage that she remembers in him; the courage that could lead him to defy his family, the courage that could lead him to become the greatest elf that Eärwen’s ever known.

“Eärwen-”

“Avahaira,” says Eärwen gently, and her mother falls silent, stricken. “Name me, Mother. Name me the name you gave me. I know that you keep thinking it.”

“Enough,” says Olwë. “I tire of this.”

“You tire?” asks Eärwen.  _ “You  _ tire?”

“Do you have something to say to me, Avahaira Dispossessed?”

“Yes,” says Eärwen. “For you do not know, and you have never wished to know, but there are things that must be said before you refuse to give us aid.”

“Like what?” asks Hyanda.

“Do you remember your commands to us, the day Fëanáro came to Alqualondë as king?”

Olwë stares at her. “I told your brothers that- I… wished for…”

“Peace,” finishes Eärwen. “You meant it as a command for Fëanáro. Peace, and not war. But it was not Fëanáro nor the Noldor that drew their weapons first: it was your son. It was my brother that chose war.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That you can choose to obey the word of the law and lose all the children that you have,” Eärwen tells her parents. “Or you can choose to obey the spirit of our love, of a parent’s love. Either you let me be your daughter and aid me as a queen of the Noldor and remain parents to all three of your children, or you disown me and thereby disown the sons who disobeyed you at the Kinslaying as well, and become parentless in one fell swoop.” She smiles, tight and thin, at her mother. “A kind welcome it would be, when they return to life, to know they’re not welcome in your home. In their home.”

Hyanda folds her hands over her chest. “What is to say that we don’t simply disown you and keep them?”

“Because I know you to be just,” says Eärwen, and stands as she did before Morgoth, shoulders high, neck stiff, muscles loose with anticipation, braids shining and bright as the stars that her people have ever loved. “Even if you are not kind.”

…

…

When Anairë had first come to Beleriand, she’d snuck in on a boat as quietly as she could manage. The second time she arrives at Beleriand, it’s on a fleet of boats of shining, beautiful white: with the Valar at her side and flying above her head.

This time, her husband has enough warning to gather at the coast with their family. 

Eärwen comes to her where she stands at the prow of the boat, hair whipping loosely about her face, gaze locked unerringly onto the rocky coast that’s still only coming into view, even for the Eldar. 

“You’ll stain your gown.”

“I’m fighting the urge to swim to shore,” replies Anairë, turning to Eärwen, though she doesn’t get down from the prow and only leans back against the railing. “Staining my gown’s the least of my worries right now.” She pauses, then says, “I’m uncertain if anything frightens me, actually, any longer- apart from my family. Of course.”

“Írissë is that terrifying, is she?” asks Eärwen, amused.

“She can be.”

“Mmm. Do you remember that time she stripped Angarato and Findaráto of their clothes and then tied them to the tallest tree in Tirion?”

Anairë snorts. “Because they refused to share their toy swords with her? I’ll never forget it.”

“The boys didn’t realize that screaming for help would bring more people than help!”

“Do you know how hard it was to punish her?” demands Anairë. “I had to stop laughing long enough to make her understand that tying her family to trees is unacceptable! And neither of our husbands were helpful! At all!”

“They  _ were  _ laughing very hard.”

“And so were you!”

Eärwen grins at her. “Little wonder you weren’t the favorite parent.”

“Oh, don’t think I won’t push you into the ocean,” says Anairë, and leans back, so she’s tipped half over the railing and her hair’s almost on the water. When she speaks, she has to shout for Eärwen to hear. “I’ve never been very impatient, in my life, but…” She swings up, and meets Eärwen’s gaze, and drops her voice, “-I feel like there’s lightning in my veins today.”

Eärwen’s gaze alights on her face, mirthful and shocked and unsurprised as only a friend of thousands of years could be. “Speak softly, lest the Ainur take exception.”

“The treaty signed and witnessed allows me to speak as I wish to those who already know.”

_ “Does  _ it,” says Eärwen, folding her arms. “I wonder who wrote that clause.”

Anairë smiles, wide and toothed, back at her. “I wonder indeed.”

“You’re terrible.” Eärwen reaches out and touches her hair, damp at the ends and caked in salt. “Can you see Nolofinwë yet?”

“I caught a glimpse,” murmurs Anairë. She touches her own cheeks, where the muscles hurt from smiling too hard, from being unable to  _ stop  _ smiling. “He wears a crown- but it’s so much smaller than I’m used to! Lalwen hasn’t been taking care of his hair, has she?”

“As if Nolofinwë can’t take care of his own hair.”

“He can’t! I had to do it every morning, and let out the braids in the evening.”

Eärwen tilts her head. “Well, we knew that he was lazy about it- your hair certainly wasn’t very elaborate. Not even on the most important feast days.”

“He  _ can’t,”  _ stresses Anairë. “He manages to knot everything up and pulls out more hair than he braids. Do you think I haven’t tried to teach him? My husband’s about as good at braiding hair as he is bad at ruling.”

“With word-smithing like that,” says Eärwen, “it’s little wonder that you managed to convince the Valar to accede to your demands.”

Anairë rolls her eyes, and Eärwen laughs, loud and bright enough to make the seagulls on the deck startle.

…

The sky shines. 

And as the Valar dock in Beleriand on the swan ships of the Teleri, Anairë leaps off of the prow. The water comes up to her chest but she does not bother with pausing for that or the cold; only wades forwards, as swiftly as she can manage. She’s not even up to her thighs before Nolofinwë reaches her and crushes her to him.

She’s crying; Anairë can barely see him through the tears blurring her vision. The cold is stinging through her fingers, and the water is wicking the wool of her dress to her skin, and still all she can feel is the thud of Nolofinwë’s heart and the gasps in her own ears. Then Findekáno is there, scooping her up from the side, and so is Turukáno, and so is- is that-

“Írissë,” gasps Anairë, and twists in Nolofinwë’s hold to grip her daughter closer and closer. When she pulls away, Írissë’s eyes are shining, bright as the moon hanging above them.

“Amil,” she says, and, trembling, launches herself at Anairë so hard that Anairë stumbles and falls backwards into the sea.

Sputtering, they both come up, and Nolofinwë grabs her before anyone else comes up. 

“Please,” he says, but he’s grinning at her, and guiding her to land, and not looking away from her face. “I’ve only gotten you back moments earlier, Anairë. I’d rather not lose you now.”

“No,” says Írissë, looping her arms over Anairë’s shoulders and draping herself over her mother. “We’d rather keep you. For another month, at least.”

_ “Aredhel,”  _ says Findekáno, and does something- Anairë isn’t certain of what- but he manages to dislodge Írissë and thereby curl over Anairë. “Don’t worry, Ammë. We’ll keep you for a little longer. You’ll always be welcome in Dor-lómin, even if your daughter kicks you out of Gondolin.”

“I see,” says Anairë. “Am I not allowed to live in my husband’s city, then?”

Turukáno snorts. “Your daughter’s got her father wrapped about all the knives he’s spent the past hundred years giving her, Ammë. If she manages to kick you out of Gondolin your best hope’s Fingon, not Father.”

“Oh, shut up,” says Írissë, but she’s laughing, and so are they all.

…

On the beach, after Anairë changes out of her soaking gown and into a fresher one, she meets Nerdanel. For a moment, they look at each other: they’ve both changed, in the year that they’ve been separated. 

There’s a light in Nerdanel’s eyes and a heaviness to her steps that Anairë doesn’t remember from Aman. A joy, Anairë thinks; a joy that they’d all almost forgotten. 

“It’s good to see you,” she says.

Nerdanel nods. “As it is to see you. Were the terms of the treaty… favorable?”

“As favorable as I could get them. Speaking of which-” Anairë digs out the Silmaril from the crown she’d discarded on the settee and tosses it to Nerdanel, “-this is yours, I believe?”

“Not mine. But I’ll get it to where it needs to go.” 

“Has it been very difficult for you?”

Nerdanel’s lips thin, but Anairë’s uncertain if it’s because she’s amused or because she’s angry. “It wasn’t pleasant, let’s put it that way. Speaking to my sons- they’ve changed. They’ve  _ all  _ changed. You need to be ready for that.”

“I didn’t see it now,” says Anairë softly.

Nerdanel shrugs. “Are you the same elleth as you were before you danced in front of Morgoth? Before you lost Arakáno?”

“No.”

“They’re different,” Nerdanel repeats. “They love you. As you love them. But it might not be the same as before. It will not be the same as before.”

Anairë nods slowly. “I think,” she says, surprised at herself, “I can live with that.”

“Anairë,” says Nerdanel. Then she smiles, slow and soft and gentle as Anairë has never seen before. “We did it. We  _ did  _ it.”

“Yes,” says Eärwen.

She approaches, holding a bottle of wine that Anairë’s never seen before; it splashes darker and thicker than any wine she’s seen from Aman in its bottle.

“From Doriath,” Eärwen explains, eyes glittering. “A gift from Artanis- it’s been so long since I had properly distilled spirits. When this is all over- after we’ve met with our family- we’re getting together and drinking this. You have one week, Anairë, before I kidnap you. Yes?”

“It’s not over,” says Anairë, a little helplessly. “We have- the Valar must reach Angband- must-”

“There will always be something,” says Eärwen quietly. “There will always be something more. Some balrog that escapes, some evil that must be cured.”

“If we forget to celebrate the triumphs,” says Nerdanel slowly, eyebrows arched, “are they truly as triumphant as we think? The grandest shield against Morgoth was not blood or fury, Anairë: it was love. You said it. You  _ understood  _ it. Let’s celebrate this, then, and let us celebrate again when Morgoth is put in chains, and let us celebrate again when the darkness of Angband is cleansed, and let us celebrate again when _ ever  _ we wish it!” 

“Not tonight,” Eärwen puts in, when Anairë doesn’t gainsay them. “Tonight is for family. For the family we’ve missed for too long. But soon. Soon. I will not be put off!”

“No,” says Anairë, and reaches out.

In Angband, they had held hands before walking to doom and near-certain death, for the slender hope of saving their family. Anairë had not dared to look at her- her  _ sisters’,  _ really- faces then. Now she does not look away: she sees Nerdanel’s beautiful hair, washed out by moonlight into umber and coiling darkness; Eärwen’s shimmering silver. Nerdanel’s fierce eyes, and Eärwen’s calm gaze. The slip and slide of their bones beneath their skin, lovely as all the stars in the sky.

“I look forward to the future, then,” says Anairë, and holds their hands in her own, as tight as she dares. “I look forward to the future, as I celebrate the past.”

They laugh, and kiss, and separate to their individual families; but they will return as well, if not tonight then soon. Anairë is certain of that, down deep, deep, deep in her bones.


End file.
